The delay, albeit brief, in BN's naming a candidate for the Ba'Kelalan seat is being viewed in some quarters as confirmation that the PKR state chief and contestant for the seat, Baru Bian, is now endowed with the stature to which a Dayak leader has not ascended in more than two decades.

The conferment of this stature is vital to enabling this Native Customary Rights exponent to arrive at the level where the Dayak majority in the state would readily regard him as their leader, despite the disadvantage of him hailing from a small segment – Lun Bawang – of that majority's vast ethnic mosaic.

Sarawak's Dayak community makes up 49 percent of the state's 2.3 million people. The Iban are the most numerous in this mosaic, followed by the Bidayuh, with the Orang Ulu, the cluster that groups the Lun Bawang, the smallest segment...