COMMENT In his first press conference after being named chief minister-elect of Sarawak, Adenan Satem said he will not be making any changes to his cabinet.

“I don’t believe in changing horses in midstream,” cracked Adenan at his first press conference yesterday, when asked about what he plans to do with a state cabinet he will have inherited from retiring CM Abdul Taib Mahmud.

Last Wednesday, Adenan was chosen by Abdul Taib as the replacement chief minister when the latter retires on Feb 28.

While the 69-year-old Adenan won’t want to rock the boat for the simple reason that the major movers and shakers in the state BN are all on edge at the start of the post-Taib era, he cannot defer for long the naming of the deputy chief ministers.

Under Taib’s 33-year tenure as chief minister, Sarawak was used to having two deputy chief ministers.

Alfred Jabu Numpang ( left ), deputy president of Parti Pesaka Bumiputra Bersatu (PBB), is the incumbent DCM (1), and while he was in the cabinet until his defeat in the state election of April 2011, George Chan of Sarawak United Peoples Party (SUPP) was DCM (2).

The DCM (2) post has been vacant since the 2011 state polls when SUPP lost in 12 of the 19 constituencies it contested.

Once installed as chief minister on Feb 28, would Adenan simply maintain the status quo, with Alfred Jabu as DCM (1) and leave the other DCM post vacant, or would he tweak the formula of balanced representation to reflect a new pecking order?

The formula for balanced representation in the top tier of the state’s ruling coalition holds that if you have a Muslim chief minister, he should be complemented with one Dayak, and one Chinese deputy chief minister.

The imperative of a Chinese DCM has weakened in the face of Chinese voter repudiation of SUPP at the 2011 state polls.

Until Chinese votes swing back to SUPP, the compulsion to name an electorally-endorsed head of the party as one of the two DCMs can be ignored.

With the selection of Adenan as Abdul Taib’s successor - in preference to Abang Johari Openg, much favoured by Putrajaya for the post, and Awang Tengah Hassan, the youngest hotshot much touted in recent years - a new consideration has intervened.

Adding insult to injury?

This is that Abang Johari’s claims to elevation in the pecking order, if ignored for the No 1 post, must necessarily be accommodated at the penultimate level.

But placing Abang Johari at the DCM (1) position would mean that Alfred Jabu, a Taib loyalist of 30-year vintage, would have to make way.

If this eventuates, it is bound to add insult to injury.

Long in the running for the chief minister’s post, albeit in a milder mode than rivals like Abang Johari and Adenan Satem, Alfred Jabu was not even named to the final trio of Adenan, Johari and Awang Tengah that Taib said he was mulling in the decisive phase of successor-selection.

This slight must have gone down badly with Alfred Jabu, the head of the Pesaka (Dayak) wing of the PBB, the dominant party in the state BN.

His terse “No comment” response when asked for his views of Adenan’s selection as the next chief minister was interpreted as barely concealed indignation.

Jabu is an Iban, not only the largest ethnicity in the Dayak race, but also the largest community in the Sarawakian mélange.

Arguments Adenan adduced and positions he took in the intense battle of the late 1980s till early 1990s on matters then raging and having to do with native customary rights, earned the man the lasting suspicion of the Ibans.

If Adenan attempts to mollify Putrajaya with the placement of Abang Johari in the DCM (1) position, he can only appease Dayak - specifically Iban - sentiments by selecting an Iban for the second DCM role.

Jabu, after having been DCM (1) for a long time, cannot be relegated to the DCM (2) post without adding gratuitous insult to the injury of his being bypassed for chief minister by Taib.

How then is Adenan to sort out this tangle?

In the 1998 PBB internal election, Abang Johari beat Adenan for the deputy president’s post largely on the strength of Iban support for him over Taib-backed Adenan.

The Iban support was taken as payback for Adenan for the anti-Iban flavour of his exertions on behalf of Taib in the late 1980 to early 1990s battle for the political control of Sarawak that had pitted Taib against his uncle, Rahman Yaakub.

Would Adenan opt to name James Masing ( left ), the Iban leader of Parti Rakyat Sarawak, to the second DCM position?

That would appease Dayak sensitivities alright, but Jabu would be extremely hard done by if he were left lowered and ignored by these changes to the pecking order.

Perhaps his personal sensitivities can be ignored altogether, given that he has always played the faithful flunkey and can be counted on not to raise remonstrance to rebellion.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for four decades now. He likes the profession because it puts him in contact with the eminent

without being under the necessity to admire them.