SAPP: A party dogged by irrelevance

Its willingness to prostitute itself to the highest bidder will not suddenly give it value.

COMMENT

It was not so long ago that the Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP), a Barisan Nasional (BN) misfit which quit the ruling coalition in September 2008, was screaming itself hoarse on the issue of Sabah and Sarawak rights.

It pledged to adopt the 1963 Malaysia Agreement as its own constituency and thundered, nearly 50 years late, that the federal government had been in non-compliance.

SAPP lawyers even went to court on the issue of Borneonisation – the reserving of government jobs in Sabah and Sarawak to locals, which was a key promise made to the two states in 1963.

That was yesterday, although the Borneonisation application in court has yet to be withdrawn.

Still, SAPP is today singing a very different tune. It seems to have forgotten the by-election in Batu Sapi last year when its president, Yong Teck Lee, was soundly thrashed. To add insult to injury, very few Chinese cast their votes for SAPP. Yong was only saved the blushes when some Muslims – locals and illegal immigrants – voted for him. There was talk that money changed hands, but apparently not enough to prevent a drubbing for Yong.

SAPP, by all accounts, is now ready and willing to allow and/or assist the peninsula-based Pakatan Rakyat to contest 17 or the lion’s share of the parliamentary seats in Sabah and Labuan. It hopes Pakatan will let it contest the remaining nine seats.

No specifics have been made available. Fourteen of the parliamentary seats in Sabah and Labuan have a Muslim majority, sometimes slight, while the remaining 12 are Dusun/Chinese. Muslims seats were increased by five in 1994 while the others remained the same.

In return, SAPP wants Pakatan to stay out of 40 of the state seats that it plans to contest in the coming general election. There are 32 Muslim-majority seats and 28 Dusun/Chinese seats in the state assembly, the former’s seats having been increased by 12 in 1994.

At the same time, SAPP leaders are claiming that their party never signed up with the Borneo Alliance led by Jeffrey Kitingan, who is flogging the Borneo Agenda. Nothing could be further from the truth. SAPP leaders never denied the party’s membership in the Borneo Alliance until Jeffrey announced the formation of the Sabah chapter of the Sarawak-based State Reform Party (STAR).

Forgotten pledges

For starters, SAPP seems to have forgotten about the Malaysia Agreement, which pledges political autonomy for Sabah and Sarawak. Such autonomy would not be possible if peninsula-based parties insist on grabbing seats in the local state assemblies and representing Malaysian Borneo in Parliament.

The Malaysia Agreement also envisaged that Peninsular Malaysia would have at least one seat less than two thirds of the total in Parliament, with the rest – one third plus one – held collectively by Sabah and Sarawak. This provision has not been honoured ever since Singapore’s departure from the Federation in 1965. Peninsular Malaysia took seven of Singapore’s 15 parliament seats instead of all of them going to Sabah and Sarawak to maintain the balance.

There is a serious imbalance of seats in Parliament today – only 57 seats instead of 75 for Sabah and Sarawak with the remaining 165 for Peninsular Malaysia instead of 147 seats. This can be corrected only by an increase of at least 27 seats for Malaysian Borneo and no increase for Peninsular Malaysia.

The imbalance has been compounded by peninsula-based parties holding Sabah and Sarawak seats in Parliament.

Again, the political autonomy of Sabah and Sarawak has been further compromised by peninsula-based parties holding seats in the Sabah and Sarawak state assemblies.

The bottom line is that Sabah and Sarawak’s share of political power in Malaysia is already less than what it should be even without SAPP’s tail-between-the-legs offer to Pakatan.

SAPP’s latest stand is nothing new or surprising. The party has never hesitated to sell out the rights of Sabahans whenever it suited the personal and business interests of its leaders.

Yong did not hesitate to ditch Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) just before state polls in 1994 to form SAPP and team up with Umno.

Desperate gamble

The combination did not win the state election. But that did not deter Yong who, along with one moneybag from Sabah and another from Sarawak, helped stage-manage defections from PBS to bring Umno to power.

Hence, it comes as no surprise that no one batted an eyelid when Yong pulled SAPP out from BN on Sept 17, 2008, a day after fallen angel Anwar Ibrahim’s People Revolution was stillborn. SAPP’s leaders wailed and moaned, and beat their chests in unison in mock fury at “the rights of Sabah and Sarawak being ignored by Putrajaya”. This was the mother of all after-thoughts.

It is unlikely that Pakatan will take SAPP seriously. Yong, it must be remembered, single-handedly came up with the idea of PBS pulling out from BN on the eve of the 1990 general election. Already, there is no love between SAPP and the Sabah chapter of DAP. That virtually kills any chances of SAPP picking up Chinese seats in Parliament and only a token chance of winning state seats.

Yong and his faction left PBS when they found themselves to be increasingly irrelevant. This irrelevance had been dogging them since 1994. It reached its zenith on Sept 17, 2008. The presence of PBS in BN, following its return in the early 2000s, meant that SAPP had degenerated into a mosquito party without even nuisance value.

SAPP today is of no use to anyone in the East or West, the twain that shall never meet.

The willingness of SAPP to politically prostitute itself to the highest bidder, bearing in mind the imminent 13th general election, will not suddenly increase its value from zero to something.

The suspicion among Sabah DAP members and leaders is that Sapp wants to have a free ride at the expense of the opposition alliance in order to frog back “with more bargaining power” into the BN. The idea is not far-fetched considering the dubious although very short history of SAPP.

No one can tell SAPP leaders how they should get their politics and relationships right across the political divide. However, if they don’t make the right choices, the party will not be even a footnote in history after the next election.

Already, not only the Chinese – think Batu Sapi – but the Dusuns and native Muslims wouldn’t touch SAPPwith a ten-foot pole.

That leaves only the illegal immigrants to buy over in SAPP’s desperate gamble for votes. The illegal immigrants are the only niche left for SAPP.