In the immediate aftermath of the Sarawak state election, among opposition circles there was a sense of deja vu about the near wipeout of the slate of Sarawak National Party (Snap) candidates and the yet-to-be-registered Malaysia Dayak Congress (MDC), who together with Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), formed a loose coalition called Barisan Bersatu Sarawak (BBS) to fight the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN).

Longtime observers of the Sarawak election scenario were not surprised at the failure of the Dayak vote to go to the opposition despite conceding that there was widespread anxiety in the Dayak heartlands over the issue of land.

Snap contested 29 seats for the 71-member state assembly and the MDC contested as independents in a majority of the 16 seats from which Snap and PKR stayed away, so indicating that those seats were for their compatriots in the MDC.

In the event, only in Engkilili did Snap's Dr Johnical Rayong won from his opponent who was from Sarawak United People's Party (Supp), adding to the latter party's woes exposed by the whitewash of their candidates in Kuching where young candidates from the Democratic Action Party (DAP) humiliated Supp incumbents in the election's most notable feature.

Observers who had predicted that the Dayak vote would behave very much as it did in the 2001, 1996 and 1991 polls that is, go to the ruling BN doubted the Dayak capacity to vote in line with their anxiety.

Money sways the votes

Obviously, the financial inducement dangled by the ruling party, such as the announcement days before polling on May 20, that 4,760 villages chiefs would receive a monthly allowance, backdated to March 1, 2006, totalling RM5.7 million, played a role in swaying the headmen to the BN.

Tuai rumah (longhouse headmen) play an important role in the communal life of the villagers. Since the vast majority of the families that live in these houses eke out a living - growing hill padi or cultivating small plots of rubber, pepper or oil palm that can be called subsistence, they are cash strapped. A little lubrication goes a long way to sway their vote.

"We told them you can accept those inducements and then let the future generations curse you when your land is taken from you, " said Daniel Tajem, the spokesman of the BBS who stood and lost in his former stronghold of Bukit Begunan in the Sri Aman parliamentary area.

Did the Dayak villagers, particularly the Iban in the upper reaches of the Rajang river, doubt that the situation with respect to their Native Customary Rights land was as fraught as Tajem had framed it?

Since 1976, a lot of this NCR land has been taken under the auspices of Salcra, the acronym for Sarawak Land Consolidation and Rehabilitation Authority, and converted for plantation agriculture, growing oil palm and rubber. No comprehensive statistics have been compiled about the success or its lack of this effort at taking villagers' land and turning it into, supposedly, agri-gold.

"The Salcra system was tainted with corruption, from the purchase of fertilisers to the others works on the estates, so that at the end of the day there was little left by way of monthly salary or annual dividends for the villagers who agreed to the lease of their land for plantation agriculture," said one critic.

He added the villagers have little faith that their land the big companies want to lease to convert for large scale plantation agriculture would bring them recompense in the form of sizeable monthly income and attractive annual dividends. In some cases, said some villagers, only one member of a family that had leased the land to the conglomerate would be allowed to work on the estate as a hired hand.

'Descendants will curse you'

If the situation was bleak, and if the BN government appeared in cahoots with the companies that are engaged in plantation agriculture, why do Dayaks still vote the BN?

"It's the money that makes its appearance a few days before the elections," offered a veteran Dayak oppositionist who even before the May 20 poll suggested that the outcome of the vote would hinge on the village headmen's reaction to the lucre that wafts in like an apparition, usually three days before polling.

"We told them if you go with the money, your descendants would curse you when their land is lost down the years," said Maxwell Roggis, a veteran campaigner for the opposition.

Two days after the elections, Roggis was stoical in the face of the near wipeout of the Dayak opposition only one Snap candidate was elected (Engkilili) and one independent came through in a Dayak area (Ngemah).

Two seats are a paltry return on supposedly so much Dayak disquiet on the land issue. Roggis said people are too hard up to resist.

Roggis' gloom brought to mind what Walter Bagehot, the founder of the respected weekly The Economist , who relished aphorisms, said: "To the rich poverty is an anomaly. They can't understand why those who want dinner don't ring the bell."