The Showman, Joker and Village Clown But Never The Chief Minister

 

The Showman, Joker and Village Clown But Never The Chief Minister
- Aki Ari Aup

“SIMON! Urgent! Convoy tomorrow. Sibu-Kapit. EkoPark meet point. 6am. RM 200 elaun. Must come” 

I read that text from my old friend and fellow bike enthusiast, Halim ‘Harry’ Ramli, several times trying to make sense of it. Harry has never sent me any text as strange as this one in all of our 20 years of friendship. 

In fact, bike convoys are typically very well-planned affairs – schedules, routes, logistics, emergency procedures, route timing, informing authorities and so on. Last minute bike convoys usually end up being tremendously chaotic episodes, if not outright hazardous events.

“What is this about, Harry?”, I texted back. 

“Just come. Emergency!” was the almost instantaneous reply. 

Convoy emergency. Now that’s something entirely new. I have not heard that one in all my 56 years of existence, and that sealed the deal. I had to see what the whole big occasion was about. Perhaps an asteroid the size of a babi hutan crashed into the forest of Rantau Panjang Park last night and our local Sibu Angels Biker’s Club is sending out a scientific expedition to extract the specimen.

Come 6.00 am the next morning, I arrived promptly on the main road leading to Eco Park on my beloved BMW G310R. Before I had the chance to look for Harry and interrogate him on the nature of big emergency, I had the second shock of my life in less than 12 hours. 

There were no less than 200 bikes of all shapes and sizes clogging up the entire stretch, and I could see that many more were streaming in from the distance. Our Sibu biker’s club has a maximum of 20 riders, on a good day. Where on earth did all these fellas come from? 

As I sat on my bike still shell-shocked, Harry rode up beside me on his Tracer 900GT and grinned from ear to ear. “You made it, Simon” he beamed while enthusiastically fist bumping me.

“What’s this about, Harry?” I whispered over the roaring engines of our bikes. 

“We are going to make history today, Simon. Just tag along with me.” And that ended any further information I could pry out of Harry. 

                              

               

Come 8.00 am, I finally realised that I would be part of a really gigantic convoy of bikes from all over Sarawak riding along with Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Tun Openg from Sibu to Kapit, and back. 

Before we began, we were briefed by one of the CM’s officers about the various grandiose projects of the Sarawak Government around the areas which we would be passing by. 9KM Nanga Ngungun-Temalat road. Kapit Square. Kapit Waterfront. The list went on and on. 

I was pretty sure the CM himself was briefing the very front of our convoy at the very same time, but we were too far behind in the line to see it or hear anything. Hence his officer came and acted as a poor man’s wireless repeater of sorts. 

Our convoy took off on schedule without incident at a little before 9.00 am. The entourage stopped by Kanowit for our late breakfast, and here we were given another speech by the CM. Again, he gloated about all the different lavish projects being cooked up by his office. 

This time he talked about the launch of TV Sarawak and how it would change the landscape of Sarawak and improve the people’s lives. (Although I was quite tempted to stand up and ask him how is a TV station going to provide primary school education to the Penan kids in Belaga)

Then he went on to give specifics the earlier Kapit Waterfront, Kapit Cultural Center, Kapit Market, Kapit Recreation Center projects and a load of other really impressive sounding developments (I tuned him out 10 minutes in… I was more preoccupied with what I wanted to eat for lunch at Kapit later).

In our next leg of the journey (Kanowit-Kapit), I had the time to finally let what the CM said sink in. Recalling his past speeches and announcements, it finally dawned upon me that we have a CM who likes to announce impressive sounding projects, but with nothing tangible to show for it. 

Going as far back as when he was the State Tourism minister in 2012, he announced plans to make my Sibu town the most popular tourist destination in the whole state. 

As my mind slowly processed all that he said to us I simultaneously put side by side in my mind the images of him straddling the Honda Goldwing Trike DCT and the images of the longhouses of the rural folks along the road to Kapit. A year 2020 Honda Goldwing basic bike costs about RM208,000.00 and conversion to a trike would have cost another RM100,000. RM308,000.00 would have been enough to built 3 bilik in a longhouse, to the standards of a single storey terrace house in Sibu Jaya. And I wonder what thoughts would be in a king’s mind when he turun padang and sees the living conditions of his long suffering subjects. Does he feels that he is guilty of dereliction of duty to his subjects? 

After being elevated to a Chief Minister, his trend of proposing glorious sounding schemes not only continued, but was elevated many folds. For example, he boldly announced the Kuching LRT project which became a major laughing stock for Sarawakians all over. 

I don’t go to Kuching very often except for business, but I have yet to see a single brick being laid for the LRT as of yet, 3 years since the announcement. 

It was a long, quiet ride on the countryside road. An idle mind does the devil’s work, as they say. So I decided not to let my mind idle and dug a little deeper into my memory about Abang Johari’s past announcement and what came up made me laughed myself silly under my big helmet:

Stolport airport for Spaoh

Stolport airport for Kapit

LRT for Samarahan/Kuching

ART to replace LRT

Now you see now you don’t hydrogen buses 

And I have not even begun to scratch the surface, I reckoned to myself. 

After our little trip to Kapit and a nice big lunch, we were on our way back to Sibu. I was on this return trip that I finally realised what kind of CM we have on our hands. 

A showboat, a joker and a clown. But never The Chief Minister. 

As for the “history” Harry said we would create? Well, a 100KM motorbike ride with the Clown. That’s it. So much for a history.