“Someone asked me... how it felt and I was reminded of a story that a fellow townsman of ours used to tell Abraham Lincoln. They asked him how he felt once after an unsuccessful election. He said he felt like a little boy who had stubbed his toe in the dark. He said that he was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh.” - Adlai E Stevenson II

To be honest I was not paying too much attention to the Sarawak state elections. I know it makes good copy and for a regime beset by scandals, it was supposed to be some sort of bellwether for how Umno would fare, but besides Bridget Welsh’s excellent series of articles, the punditry was mundane and the conclusion obvious.

The issues facing the average Sarawakian (well, there is no average Sarawakian) are far removed from the preoccupations of urban East Malaysians, which dominate the political discourse but do not reflect the reality on the ground. The only tsunamis in Sarawak or Sabah for that matter in the foreseeable future are the literal ones, which destroy more than just political aspirations.

I was not even surprised by the loss by the DAP. A DAP political operative working the ground in Sarawak informed me that Chinese sentiment was shifting. Or should that be waffling? Or is there a difference between urban sentiment and Chinese sentiment? No matter, either way, not everything can be blamed on the mendacious political stratagems of Umno.

The political infighting that Pakatan subjected us to was unnecessary, incompetent and gives credence to the Umno propaganda that nobody but Umno can lead the country cohesively. I want to believe that Pakatan learnt a lesson from all of this but the reality is that, Pakatan representatives have become career politicians, looking to maintain their seats and playing the long con instead of anything resembling regime change.

The problem has always been that the opposition has always sought to destroy the Umno vote bank, to gain federal power. They employ strategies that work well in the peninsula but in reality do not translate in Eest Malaysia. A blast from the past, from an old article of mine -

“And if ever opposition parties there get their act together, the long neglected Borneo states could galvanise the mindsets of the group-think opposition supporters here.

“There is a perception that PKR is the weak link in the opposition pact and there is truth in that, but it also has the most dynamic personalities in the alliance. The true believers, in the multicultural experiment which is Pakatan Rakyat amidst (as they tell me) the closet racialists, religious zealots and bigots, all singing the multiracial/cultural song.”

There is no point going over it now. There are many within the opposition who know what is needed but unfortunately are shackled by the political shenanigans of political elites who are only interested in keeping their jobs.

Umno however has much to fear. Although of late there has been a renewed effort to discredit former prime minister and Najib Abdul Razak nemesis Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Umno insiders and ironically die-hard Najib supporters tell me that he (Mahathir) is rarely wrong when it comes to reading the tea leaves in the Umno cup.

Which is why “they” pay attention when he gravelly [with a hint of schadenfreude] intones, “Najib has no reason to be happy? What the Sarawak BN achieved is to weaken the authority of the central government which Najib leads.” He is now going to be even more dependent on the support of Sarawak than before.

For Umno, support costs money

You see for Umno, support costs money. Nobody supports Umno because of ideology or because they are legitimate caretakers or because of the belief that only they can lead the country. Patronage, cronyism, feudalism, all these things are connected to money. Cash is King, is the only way Umno members know how to show and receive love or loyalty.

Useful idiots that the establishment and opposition rely on to disseminate propaganda are distinct from the power brokers who rely on a steady infusion of cash, to maintain in Umno’s case, political hegemony. Sarawak and Sabah has now become the most vital component of maintaining Umno hegemony.

This is why there has always been a strategy to Umnoise the native (sic) populations of Sabah and Sarawak . Here is an example by way of recap. “Umno legal adviser turned chief justice now chairperson of the Special Review Commission on Civil Service Transformation, Zaki Azmi, recommended that the qualification requirements for Dayaks and other non-Malay natives be lowered to lubricate their entrance into the civil service.

“How lowering the qualification requirements would improve the service was not exactly elaborated on, since his mindset (Zaki’s) like most neo-colonialist thinking assumed playing the racial card would score points with the natives even when you belittle their intelligence in the process.”

But really, what Prime minster Najib has done, is link Umno’s survival to a shadowy group of venal politicians, avaricious plutocrats and race hustlers, who have very little interest in the people they claim to represent. Their only concern is enriching themselves by courting Umno power brokers and nebulous multinational conglomerates whose only interests is pillaging the natural resources of Sarawak. Much like Umno.

This spells trouble for Umno or rather Prime Minister Najib, who has had to make his own deals with foreign powers to ensure his political survival that he has linked to Umno’s political survival. It not like the captain going down with the ship but rather the captain sinking his vessel.

The bizarre race and religion polemics that were emanating from Sarawak points to a possible destabilisation of Umno’s favorite tool - Islam. While there was much talk of Muslim/Malay hegemony, underneath it all was the sentiment that Sarawakians had enough of Islam intruding into their lives.

Power brokers in Sarawak were making overt moves to demonstrate that Islam was not the official religion of the land and that even though Umno was hawking its wares, the reality was that as far as Islam was concerned, there would be a renewed effort to stop or hamper the spread of it, in Sarawak at least.

The Big Cheese “Adenan had said the negotiations for autonomy will come in three stages and the following two will entail more powers for the state.

“In the second stage, we will look at what legislation and legal provisions can be considered by the federal government based on the consensus between the federal and state governments.”

In other words, Sarawak is making moves to be independent from Umno. As always, loyalty comes with a price, which ultimately may be too high for Umno.

S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy.