Why Padang Merdeka is no Liberation Square

Pak Bui

There are many parallels between Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Sarawak’s Taib Mahmud. Both are iron-fisted dictators. They have remained in power for three decades, by intimidating opponents, suppressing dissent, and using rigged landslide election victories as a pseudo-democratic cloak.

Both strongmen maintain order by tight control over the police, the state media and the election machinery. Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP) and Taib’s Barisan Nasional (BN) both enjoy unparalleled power.

The NDP and BN claim legitimacy from sham elections, crippled by restrictions against political opponents, corruption of election officials, and overt vote-buying. Mubarak’s NDP won 88% of the popular vote, for example, in Egypt’s first ever multi-candidate elections in 2005.

Both dictators have locked opponents away. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed El Baredei and thousands of other Egyptian dissidents have been detained, like the countless Penans and other rural Sarawakians at timber blockades in Sarawak.

Both leaders have been supported by powerful foreign backers. Mubarak has been propped up by the United States, and Taib by Umno. The United States provides military aid to Egypt, one of only five lucky recipients of American military largesse. The others are fellow Arab dictatorships Tunisia and Jordan, and two countries with similar contempt for human rights: Colombia and Israel, as Noam Chomsky has pointed out in the Guardian.

Umno and successive federal governments have kept Taib in control by providing financial, military and police backing, and glowing coverage in state-controlled news reports. They have also granted him immunity from prosecution for corruption and human rights abuse.

Immense fortunes

Both men have also been reported to have immense fortunes, after humble beginnings. Mubarak was elevated from his post as Air Force chief to vice-president of the NDP by his predecessor Anwar Sadat. Taib was raised to power by his uncle and predecessor Abdul Rahman Yakub. Both then consolidated their power and suppressed all of their rivals to power, ensuring there can be no clear succession plan.

“There was a lot of corruption in this regime and stifling of public resources for personal gain”, said Amaney Jamal, a political scientist at Princeton, of Mubarak. He pointed out the estimates of Mubarak’s personal fortune, between US$40 and US$70 billion (RM130 to RM230 billion) are comparable to those of other leaders in oil-rich Gulf nations.

“Opposition groups say the NDP’s business cartel have used their authority to monopolise the country’s wealth, while most of the Egyptian people are living in despair,” Al-Jazeera writes of Mubarak.

These observations could very well be made of Sarawak’s own business cartel, as described in graphic detail in news sites like Sarawak Report, Malaysiakini, the Malaysian Insider and Hornbill Unleashed.

The enormous sums laid bare by these websites, billions of ringgit siphoned off overseas, are not so different from Mubarak’s fortune. Taib’s family property fortune in the United States based on one company alone, Sakti, according to Sarawak Report, is worth US$80 million, or RM250million. As a benchmark, Sarawak’s annual state revenue is around RM3.7 billion.

Taib and Mubarak taken by surprise

The recent surge in protests against Mubarak (on the street) and Taib (in cyberspace), fuelled by the internet, has apparently taken them by surprise. Both leaders have grown so accustomed to adulation and sycophancy that they do not expect any widespread opposition. They do not appear to have effective, well-planned tactics to overcome the rising protests.

Mubarak’s supporters have tried using violence to beat up protestors at Tahrir (or Liberation) Square. But the thugs’ violence has backfired, succeeding only in keeping protestors camped in the relative safety of the square, and encouraged them to stay. Images and news of the violence have provoked even more ordinary Egyptians to move into the square to show solidarity with the besieged demonstrators.

Taib has simply pretended to ignore all the documented allegations of corruption, and has wheeled out some half-baked White Paper to try to silence his opponents. He has not dared to sue Sarawak Report for fear of attracting further publicity.

No uprising in Sarawak

But Sarawakians will not rise up against Taib as ordinary Egyptian workers, housewives and students have done in Cairo and Alexandria.

Egypt’s population is far more urbanised than Sarawak’s. This provides more immediate support for a mass movement and makes communication and organisation easier.

Sarawak has a large population of poor peasants, but the extent of urban poverty and hunger in Egypt is far greater. The poor in rural areas often still have enough to eat.

Sarawak’s feudal political system also inhibits dissent against the top dogs, even if corruption and abuse of power are as rampant as in Egypt. The hierarchies that dominate village life mean Sarawak’s village headmen can be bought over by the ruling elite, and maintain the status quo.

And Malaysia’s mutated democratic system still provides more public space than Egypt’s secret police. There are democratic institutions still in play, even if they are hamstrung, and so-called “pressure escape valves” that allow some (strictly curtailed) freedom of expression, in a small number of electronic media sites, non-governmental organisations and in limited public demonstrations.

Finally, Sarawak’s population lacks the overarching political motivations that drive protesting Egyptians. The rallying cries in Egypt include class struggle, political Islam and nationalism. Sarawak’s rural population does not subscribe to grand narratives such as these: our aspirations are often limited by our geography.

Poor rural Sarawakians may fight for their village, their headwater or their valley, and occasionally may fight for their ethnic group, but will not be easily moved by the same political banners as the Egyptian poor.

Perhaps Taib might still face his Tahrir Square one day, but it is unlikely. It is clear that mass uprising will not come to our towns during his lifetime. If Taib is forced from power, it is far more likely he will be removed by Umno, once his usefulness has waned.