Dayaks The King Maker In Kerajaan PN & Kerajaan Keluarga Malaysia
When the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government was formed in Feb 2020 and Muhyiddin Yassin became the 8th PM of Malaysia after the infamous Sheraton Move, it was the 19 GPS MPs from Sarawak that were instrumental in the formation of the the PN government. They were dubbed the king maker in an unholy alliance that is better known as a government without mandate.
https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/627876
This narrative will not be complete if there is no mention that GPS, in their king maker’s role was also instrumental in bringing PAS to be part of the Malaysian federal government for the very first time.
What was the GPS motivation in being part of a scheme that has not brought any significant good to Sarawak? Well, between May 2018 and Feb 2020, the federal government was Pakatan Harapan (PH), a coalition comprising PKR, DAP, Bersatu, Amanah and UPKO. GPS was the state government in Sarawak but was an opposition party at federal level. After 55 years of being the federal government via the Barisan Nasional (BN) it must have been torturous for BN Sarawak (later known as GPS) to find themselves in a strange and unfamiliar territory and they just have to be back in the federal government. Azmin Ali and his fellow backstabbers from PKR and from Bersatu provided them that golden opportunity in their Sheraton Move. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.
There are 19 MPs from GPS contributing to the Kerajaan Keluarga Malaysia (KKM) four-seats majority in Parliament today. GPS is not officially a partner in the dominant coalition of the Kerajaan Keluarga Malaysia. They merely entered into a sort of confidence supply agreement (CSA), an arrangement that can be loosely described as you scratch my back, I scratch yours.
In the 2018 PRU.14, BN won 19 seats (out of the 31 seats contested). Out of the 19 seats won, 9 seats were from Dayaks majority constituencies. At this point, it is useful to remember that the KKM has only a four-seats majority in parliament and it is obvious that the 9 seats from the Dayaks majority constituencies played a crucial role in GPS’s king maker role, the formation of the KKM and the participation of PAS in the federal government.
The Dayaks from these 9 parliamentary seats were in fact the real king maker.
How has Sarawak benefited from this CSA arrangement? More importantly, how have the Dayaks benefited from the cooperation and active support they rendered to BN Sarawak?
https://election.thestar.com.my/sarawak.html
Sarawak And Her Share Of The Allocation In The 12 Malaysia Plan (12MP)
The 12 MP has a total allocation of RM400 billion. No absolute amount was mention as allocated for Sarawak but PM Ismail Sabri Yaakub did say Sarawak will receive 15% of the annual basic development budget allocation, in line with the aspirations of the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63).
Premier Tan Sri Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari was reported as saying that the federal government’s RM4.47 billion allocation for Sarawak under the 12MP is still low.
The primary aspiration of MA63 was that Sarawak will be an equal founding partner to Malaya and Sabah in the federation of Malaysia. The question that must be asked now: Is 15% a reflection of Sarawak’s status as equal founding partner? Is it even an equitable allocation considering the sheer land mass of Sarawak? Obviously not.
Federal Budget 2022
The total allocation for development under the 12MP is RM400 billion, touted as the biggest 5-year road map ever. Taking the 15% of that means Sarawak share of the development allocation is RM60 billion. Spread over 4 years, Sarawak’s share of the development allocation in the federal budget should be RM15 billion per year for 4 years starting with Budget 2022 but Sarawak’s allocation under the 1st Rolling Plan of the 12MP was only RM4.47 billion.
The promise for Sarawak under the Budget 2022 is the mirror image of the amount allocated under the 1st Rolling Plan of the 12MP mentioned earlier.
Why is there such a huge difference between the promised allocation under the 12MP and the allocation under the 1st Rolling Plan as reflected in the Budget 2022? How did it happen?
Just in case there are readers who missed it, the difference is more than RM10 billion. In other words, Sarawak has been short-changed by RM10 billion.
Funding Of Mega Infrastructural Projects
There are at least two mega infrastructural projects, shelved by the PH during their 22 months tenure as federal government due to various issues that includes excessive project cost and the state of the federal treasury, described earlier as kering kontang. One is the Batang Lupar bridge project and the other, the Sarawak Sabah Link Road. The Bebuling Stolport project makes it three.
The GPS government of Sarawak should have demanded the federal PN government continue with these projects at their ( PN federal government) cost but they did not. Instead the GPS government decided to commit state funds on the assumption that the federal government will reimburse Sarawak for the cost incurred at a later date. The total estimated cost to the Sarawak government is RM2.6 billion.
The federal government will wash their hands clean off these projects if they decided not to reimburse or if the state of the federal treasury does not permit the reimbursement.
All these projects are now experiencing delays and are behind schedule.
This brings up the question of the sincerity of the 9th PM and the KKM with regards to the allocation in the 12MP and in Budget 2022 and the promise that funding was forthcoming from Putrajaya. It also brings up the question why the GPS government decided to commit so much of state’s fund on these mega projects when the money could have been used to finance initiatives that will remove all the Sarawakian households currently living below poverty level. It is said that these hard pressed households numbered at least 97,000. The vast majority of these households are Dayak households in rural Sarawak.
https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2021/04/18/state-govt-to-fund-sarawak-sabah-link-road-project-says-deputy-chief-minist/1967413 (estimated RM1.6 billion)
https://dayakdaily.com/ongoing-rm848-million-batang-lupar-bridge-fully-funded-by-gps-govt/
https://www.startupborneo.my/sarawak-govt-expected-to-fund-three-new-airport-projects/
(RM108 million project)
The 5% Royalty On Oil And Gas Derived From Sarawak Territory
Despite claims that the GPS government is fighting hard to recover state rights lost due to non-compliance by the federal government of the terms spelt out in the MA63, state rights lost due to the Petroleum Development Act 1974 (PDA’74) and the Territorial Sea Act 2012 (TSA’12) and was winning the battle there is little evidence to suggest that the state government has actually won concessions that may be considered substantial. In fact, it looks like Petronas had actually played Sarawak out. More damaging, Sarawak looks like it has been played out with the foreknowledge of the leaders in the GPS government.
When Petronas agreed to pay the 5% sales tax on O&G transactions in Sarawak in May 2020, Sarawakians thought that the GPS government has indeed won a commendable battle against the federal government. Two years down the road, it transpired that Petronas has not paid to Sarawak the 5% royalty on O&G.
The other glaring example is the rights to distribute liquid petroleum gas (LPG) in the state. When it was first announced in Dec 2021 that Petronas has agreed to divest the rights to distribute LPGs to Sarawak owned Petros, Sarawakians thought that the state government had won a major battle against the federal government.
In March 2022, it transpired that Petronas has taken a 49% stake in the company that was given the rights to distribute the LPGs and Petros has 51%. Sarawakians were initially under the impression that Petros will wholly owned the company.
The Dayaks King Maker In The KKM - How Have They Benefited?
In June 2022, it was revealed in parliament that Sarawak has 97,000 households living in poverty. It can be safely assumed that the vast majority would be households in rural Sarawak. It can also be safely assumed that these incidences of poverty are mostly among rural Dayak households. In Malaysia, the average household size is 4 people so we are looking at 388,000 Sarawakians living in poverty.
It was also revealed that in June of 2022, Sarawak and Sabah were among the states with the highest increase in poverty in Malaysia.
Dayaks In The Civil Service
The inequitable representation of Dayaks in the civil service is an ever green complaint. And the equally ever green response of the federal government (and also the state government) is that recruitment into the civil service is strictly based on merits. There is no racial discrimination they claimed.
In June 2022, a group of teacher aspirants petitioned the federal government (MOE) to increase the quota for teachers originating from Sarawak. Many of these aspiring teachers would have been Dayak.
Meanwhile, 3 months earlier, the federal minister for education revealed that 1674 teachers from Malaya had been posted to Sarawak since Dec 2021. Sarawak it seems have become the new frontier for employment of Malaysias from Malaya, much like the O&G industry in Sarawak. That move effectively deprived 1674 Sarawakian aspirants of a teaching post in Sarawak.
Where Did It All Go Wrong For The Dayak King Maker?
The Dayak political leaders in GPS claimed that the Dayaks in Sarawak will be and are in fact in a favorable position if they are united in the ruling GPS coalition. So Dayaks are to be found in PRS, a purely Dayak based party, in PDP, in PBB and in SUPP. Each of these parties have their own dominant leader or leaders and who has different agendas. And it is only in PRS that the number 1 leader is a Dayak.
Because of Dayaks are found in all the coalition parties, there is in effect no cohesion among the Dayaks. They are in fact so badly split that, despite being the majority race in Sarawak, they, as a community, could not make real headway in any fields of human endeavour in Sarawak.
So why is the the GPS government of Sarawak, despite all the failures of the federal government still bending backward to accommodate the PN and now the KKM government. Any why are the Dayaks, having suffered discrimination since Sept 1963 insist of being subservient to the very people who have discriminated against them and oppressed them? Only the Dayaks can answer that.
https://www.newsarawaktribune.com.my/why-the-quota-recruit-more-teachers-from-sarawak/
https://dayakdaily.com/sarawak-needs-as-many-as-5000-more-teachers/
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