![]() ![]() No wonder Sarawak’s skies have hummed with helicopters as BN/UMNO politicians have strutted round the state. Thanks to these tactics and to the desperate Najib the money has therefore flowed into the Sarawak campaign like a river, plain for all to see, in what appears to be the most costly election ever recorded.Įven today, on the last day of campaigning, Najib has continued to blatantly and disgracefully abuse his role by announcing local projects. Najib announces RM5 mil to upgrade Bau-Sibuluh road He has then appointed a raft of the worse and dirtiest of the top timber tycoons to stand uncontested in these seats. Moreover, it was Adenan who over the past months has forced through the creation of 11 new phoney rural seats to give himself a crucial boost, despite the violation of constitutional rules over the sizes of these constituencies.Īnd it has been Adenan who created the new phenomenon of “Direct Candidates’ answerable not to their parties but to him. Lesser figures, activists and even civil rights campaigners have also been churlishly denied entry or significantly forced to leave 48 hours before the election, plainly to disrupt effective monitoring of the counts or any recording of abuses. Nural Anwar, Azmin Ali – Adenan’s counterpart in Selangor – and the DAP leaders have all been booted out. In 2016 BN have ensured that Anwar has been jailed and none of the opposition’s big hitters have been allowed anywhere near the state. In 2011 there was at least an opposition leader, who organised and brought together his coalition and drew great crowds in Sarawak’s urban areas. The Chief of Selangor ‘insulted’ to be deemed an ‘undesirable person’ by Adenan! Sarawakians love their new CM and his ‘new and different’ way of doing things – and with him, Najib.Įxcept, as the last month has shown, there is nothing new or different about Adenan, who is an old BN warhorse politician and was part of Taib’s inner circle in Sarawak for all of the past decades of misrule.Įverything that he, together with Najib, have done on this campaign has been worse not better than before, making it arguably Sarawak’s dirtiest election ever. We didn’t just buy and bully this election, they plan to say. The new CM had furthermore made ‘bold gestures’, ticking off the timber barons and freezing (temporarily) a few concessions – all to the immense relief and delight of a people who have laboured under their oppression for so many decades.Īll of the above was considered gold dust for a BN campaign team, who had all the cash they needed (thanks to those royal donations from 1MDB) but precious little with which to win hearts and minds. He has exploited the situation by ‘dissing’ Taib with easy jokes and playing up the autonomy talk. Honeymoon over?Īdenan, the campaign managers realised, had picked up some affection in Sarawak by the very virtue of not being either of these two men. ![]() The poster army of sweetly smiling Adenans and endless slogans: “Team Adenan”, “Adenan Style”, “Adenan Way” reenforced by saturation media, have created a sinister sense of a North Korean style of personality cult.Įqually striking has been the visual absence of the real men of power behind their elderly poster boy, because Taib and Najib’s election strategists know how much both their men are hated. “Ismail Sabri doesn’t have to worry about Sarawak in the next general election,” he said, adding that GPS would be able to deliver even more MPs then.Never away from the PM’s side – Najib’s key business crony and political fixer, ex-PBB Treasurer Bustari (right)īut, it appears that so much lavish expenditure and over-kill have been poured into ramming home the messaging of a benign, different, new “Adenan Style” in this BN campaign, that it has started to turn counter-productive – not least because the reality doesn’t match. GPS had an overall advantage,” he told The Straits Times. While GPS was expected to win the election, issues such as the rise of Sarawak nationalism, low voter turnout and a lack of big political rallies due to the Covid-19 pandemic were among the key factors leading to the opposition losing, said University of Tasmania’s director of Asia Institute James Chin. ![]() There remained one seat left to count, after adverse weather conditions delayed the transport of ballot boxes by helicopter. Local outfit Parti Sarawak Bersatu managed to pick up four seats. Despite the defeat, we will continue our struggles and fight for the interests of the people,” he was quoted as saying by The New Straits Times daily. “We will take time to assess our losses and make some adjustments. Sarawak DAP chairman Chong Chieng Jen said the party respected the decision of the voters.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |