Don’t blame the East Malaysians for your mistakes

Native Sabahan Erna is (not) Malay but loves Malay literature. Her hobbies: cats/gaming/blogging aternamerin.com/Tweeting at @ernamh.

Again, some people on this side of the country have been blaming Sabah and Sarawak for Barisan Nasional winning the election.

Someone on Facebook said this: “There must be some way to neutralise or get them out of equation. Peninsular people already voted BN out.”

A friend of mine chimed in with: “Why do the rural folks (who are also being oppressed although they may not fully realise it) think that a different regime will not meet their needs?”

My feelings, for once, can be neatly summarised in one picture.

Sadly my editor would not let me write my column in memes, so I must needs explain myself.

There is a historical precedent for why East Malaysia has its seat allotment. It was agreed that it would have one-third plus one of existing Parliamentary seats to assure that it would never be “bullied” or “neutralised.”

Even that agreement has been reneged upon as, thanks to gerrymandering, in actual fact, Sabah and Sarawak hold only a quarter of the vote.

It is extremely condescending to assume that what ails and concerns the rural voter or voters in East Malaysia are not as “important” as what keeps an urbanite up at night.

Just because my priorities are different from another person’s does not make them wrong and the same goes for the situation in Malaysia.

From the very beginning, the Opposition had the cards stacked against them. BN had money and the control of mainstream media on their side, yet this did not stop them from winning over most urban voters.

It takes 140 characters in a Tweet to reach thousands of people on Twitter but for the rural folk, you need to be on foot and in their faces. Not just before the elections but all year around.

I look at the many urban professionals in the Opposition and I wonder if they could easily give up their day jobs to move into the villages, to figure out practical ways of solving problems like the lack of bridges, electricity or safe transport.

Could they really endure months of dirt roads, baths in cold, hard water and eating nothing but the simplest, most basic of foodstuffs?

My mother voted for her BN rep because she sees her often, knows that she is often busy on the ground. When my mother was ill, her BN rep came to visit her. That is what my mother remembers... and also that she has no clue who the Opposition candidates are.

“What have they (the Opposition) done for me?” She scoffed as we sat together in our comfortable, though shabby family home in the poorer parts of Kg.Likas.

When you are poor, as my family was growing up, you have enough uncertainty in your life that you do not need any more.

For a lot of the rural poor, life is hard. But most somehow survive, eke the barest of livings with no time nor space to complain.

“If you vote for me, I will make this a better place!” The rural folk have no time for promises with nothing to back them up. It is a different mindset — they have so much more to lose than the monied upper-middle class person who could easily just find better pastures overseas.

In Sarawak, the general election proved that Taib Mahmud’s PBB is a force to be reckoned with. Its win cemented its place as the strongest party in the BN coalition after Umno.

Over in Sabah, SAPP and STAR both had their behinds thoroughly kicked with Datuk Jeffrey Kitingan being the only one to win a seat for STAR.

Kitingan won only courtesy of his being a “known” face with the public choosing to reject SAPP and STAR. PKR won its seats in Sabah likely due to having already known faces like Datuk Seri Wilfred Bumburing and Datuk Seri Lajim Ukin while DAP capitalised on its growing popularity with Chinese in the state, who chose DAP over the “suspect” SAPP.

It is simply wrong to think winning Malaysia is like a hostile takeover where you can simply “buy over” the Peninsula and leave East Malaysia out in the cold.

You must give rural and East Malaysian voters a good reason to choose someone else over BN.

Promises are not reason enough.