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Back to the future? The BN has reshaped Sabah politics to its desires; now it must deliver on its side of the bargain
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The BN indeed swept Sabah, even winning nine state and five parliamentary seats without contention on nomination day. But it was not quite a clean sweep, for it lost one parliamentary and one state seat. In both elections, it won just under two-thirds of the votes cast. The election in Sabah, however, was not just the story of the success of the BN, but also the complete failure of the opposition. From nomination day onwards this was clear. Disagreement among the parties led to a situation where thirteen seats were contested by more than one opposition party, but fifteen were contested by none at all. With the BN winning five seats on less than half the votes cast, the opposition thus threw what small chances they had to the wind. Had they better been able to come to agreement, they might even have claimed the scalp of two former CMs � Chong Kah Kiat and Bernard Dompok � who were among those lucky minority-vote winners. Disillusionment
As in Sarawak, the fielding of independent candidates in Sabah is often linked to internal BN politics. The supposed �independent� who won the Kuala Penyu state constituency, for instance, is a former UMNO member who resigned from the party to contest against the official BN candidate from UPKO. Having won the seat, he is already stating that he will apply to rejoin UMNO. Similarly, the LDP has claimed that its loss to an independent in the federal Sandakan seat was the �work of a Barisan component party� (The Star, 24 March 2004). The independent candidate in question had indeed been a member of Gerakan for almost twenty years before resigning from the party earlier this month.
For a state often accused of a degree of parochialism, it is interesting to note that the nationwide opposition parties � DAP, Keadilan and PAS � performed far better than the Sabah-only opposition parties (see Table 1). Since UMNO�s first entry into Sabah a decade ago, the �Westernisation� of Sabah politics has proceeded apace. UMNO dominance The best way to understand the current Sabah state election is to put it in historical context. In 1994, when the BN was trying to wrest control of Sabah from the then opposition PBS, the federal government promised a Sabah Baru, should it win. The PBS narrowly won that election, but a spate of defections quickly saw the assembly fall into BN control. As promised, development funds soon started pouring in. But having won control of the assembly in the most dubious of circumstances, and fearful still of the PBS� popularity, the BN had to make a series of concessions. Most important here was the implementation of a rotating chief ministership, designed to assuage the fears of the non-Muslims that they would be marginalised as they perceived they had been during the early 1980s. The first real test of the Sabah Baru mandate came in the March 1999 state elections, which the BN won convincingly, even at the height of the reformasi movement. It appears to have been that result which persuaded the PBS to seek re-entry under any terms. If 1994 was the start of the BN�s attempt to remould Sabah politics, 1999 gave it the popular mandate necessary to continue, and 2004 saw it finally imposing the new political schema on Sabah. With the election in the bag from the outset, the real question at the state level was always going to be in the distribution of seats among the BN components, and thus the political weighting of the new administration. By allotting itself over half the seats to contest, 32 out of 60, UMNO ensured its continued dominance of the state legislature and thus its continued possession of the chief ministership. Parties representing the non-Muslim Bumiputera community received only one third of the BN nominations, with the remainder going to the Chinese-based parties. Semenanjung-style Perhaps one of the most interesting but un-noticed aspects of the BN allocation was the one state seat allocated to the MCA, which it won, but with less than half the votes cast against a field of three independents and four opposition party candidates. This was the first time the MCA was allowed to contest in Sabah. This can perhaps be read as a further indication of the BN�s desire to bring West Malaysian politics to Sabah. With the election won, UMNO has already dismantled the last of its concessions to the �old� politics of Sabah, by scrapping the rotating chief ministership. The BN, and UMNO in particular, are now in control, and they see no potential challengers to whom such concessions are necessary. From 1976 until 1985, Sabah was governed by perhaps the most successfully multiracial party in the history of the BN � Parti Berjaya. Led by its Muslim Chief Minister Harris Salleh, Berjaya for a long time maintained high popularity amongst all the ethnic groups of Sabah, mainly through its heavy emphasis on development. Today, Sabah appears to have returned to a similar pattern of politics, only with an increasingly Semenanjung-style BN coalition replacing the unitary Berjaya party. In essence, however, the deal is the same: that Sabah�s non-Muslim majority accept political under-respresentation � including a Muslim CM � in return for development. The 2004 election results show that, at least for the moment, this approach is again highly popular in Sabah. But the state remains one of the poorest in the country, and the BN would do well to bear in mind the speed with which Berjaya fell from grace. The BN has reshaped Sabah politics to its desires; now it must deliver on its side of the bargain, and ensure genuine prosperity for all Sabahans.
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In essence, however, the deal is the same: that Sabah�s non-Muslim majority accept political under-respresentation � including a Muslim CM � in return for development.
