Hints of change sweep Sabah hinterland

The government’s dubious immigration and Islamic policies in Sabah has pushed rural Chinese and natives into opposition fold.

By Jude Wang

PAPAR: A political undercurrent is sweeping this once sleepy provincial town and surrounding area as the nation and state prepare for polling tomorrow.

Tinged with concern and nervousness, locals voice their grievances and fears softly but with a hint of determination.

“Today Papar is not the same anymore,” a middle-aged Kadazan community leader lamented.

“We non-Muslim bumiputeras are now treated as second-class citizens,” he said referring to the steady influx of Muslim immigrants who have been getting preferential treatment from Umno politicians.

Stan, not his real name, said it was obvious that Muslim politicians who now dominate state politics favour perpetuating Malay-Muslim hegemony in Sabah and transferring their largesse to the ‘new Malaysians’ was one way of doing this.

Over the last two decades, the total number of residents in the district has grown from slightly over 59,000 in 1990 to about 124,400 in 2010. The 2010 census recorded 21,105 foreigners residing in the district making them 17% of the total 124,400 residents.

The number of newcomers granted MyKads were not considered foreigners so the actual number of such voters is likely much higher.

While Stan claimed to be the quintessential, old-time Sabahan who never had a problem living in harmony with others including ‘foreigners’, Stan’s smiling face betrayed doubts that the old ways were sufficient to deal with the new reality.

He said he had no problem relating to Muslims, but what worries him most is the manner in which some in his community have been coerced to convert to Islam through social and economic pressures.

Citing a personal experience, he recounted how he had to bring back his daughter from Kuala Lumpur where she had gone to take up a course in medicine when he found out that she was being coerced to become a Muslim.

Forced conversions

This happened, he said, when she was placed under the so-called “anak angkat” (adopted son/daughter) programme, an arrangement that the university has with certain families in the peninsula.

“That time I was so worried until I had to contact the church authorities in Johor, and only after persistently persuading my daughter to return, did she do so.

“She was jobless for the next three years. She did apply for a job as a staff nurse with her qualifications but was turned down for reason of being “overqualified”.

“When she finally got a job at the hospital, she was urged to complete her studies and she would be given aid to do so provided she converted to Islam. She accepted and they immediately promoted her to a higher post.”

Stan claimed that similar pressure was felt by a significant number of youth in his kampong, some of whom had completed diploma studies.

Unable to find work because of religious prejudice, he said they escaped being forced to convert to gain employment in the peninsula by opting to work in Singapore instead as they would not be faced with such social pressures.

Such tales and the steady influx of ‘foreigners’ into his constituency has turned Stan and many like him into supporters of the opposition which they know little about.

That doesn’t matter. As far as they are concerned they have to change the government at federal level now or they will be sidelined forever.

A local Chinese restaurant operator while happy that the town is experiencing a mini boom from the oil and gas industry due to a pipeline being constructed to Sarawak, laughed when asked what she thought about the election. “Kau tau, mah, (you know already)” she said as she pointed her index finger upwards indicating opposition party DAP’s ‘rocket’ symbol.

Almost all her employees, young girls who appeared to be immigrants, barely knew the landmarks in Papar including its famed Pantai Manis beach.

‘We can’t compete’

When asked for directions there, one said she didn’t know because she had never been there. She even mistook it for the famed Tanjung Aru beach in the state capital some 70km away.

Over in Kinarut, a border town between Papar and Penampang parliamentary constituencies, about 20 minutes drive from the state capital and along the railway line to Beaufort, business is slow.

Kinarut is now a moribund town that flourished as one of the state’s main rubber processing centres during British rule.

Notwithstanding the rapid infrastructural developments along the KK-Papar coastal highway in the mid-1980s, Kinarut still retains some of its old colonial appearances with its two blocks of wooden shop lots facing the Sabah railway.

Apart from the government school and the railway station, the most recent and modern structure was a giant billboard of the Chief Minister Musa Aman and Gulam Haidar Khan, the incumbent representative for Kawang state constituency.

Business was rather slow. Over the next 45 minutes, the restaurant owner had only three customers while we visited.

Tourists looking for something stronger than a Coca Cola or sweet tea will be disappointed. The District Council no longer allowed restaurant owners to sell beer since the majority of the residents are now Muslims.

Perhaps this partly explains why the shops close as early as 6:30 pm.

“No more happy hour … not like before,” said the restaurant owner, a Sino-Kadazan who started his business in the early 1980s.

A local farmer, a grizzled old man laying out his produce in the evening matter of factly predicted the political future for his constituency.

“We just can’t compete,” he said about the coming election and the presence of between 18,000 to 20,000 Malay-Muslim voters who outnumber the locals 3:1.

Churning undercurrents

However, the prospects for the opposition in the Papar parliamentary constituency which encompasses Kinarut are brighter and the opposition coalition has a fighting chance, he said.

“Win or lose, I have no choice but to try,” he says before adding: “Ini kali saja lah (this is the last chance),” for people like him to have their voices heard.

Perhaps Pantai Manis or Sweet Beach which is the English translation is perhaps a stark example of the churning undercurrents that are changing the face of this south-west corner of Sabah.

The beach itself has almost disappeared due to erosion over the last decade.

The government has spent millions of ringgits to build seawalls to prevent further erosion. A road, parts of it still visible and divided by a dotted white line to separate traffic, is largely submerged under fine beach sand.

The ring of stalls that used to welcome visitors at the end of road is now a ruin with mounds of trash, sanitary napkins, bottles and plastic bags.

Cows graze on the overgrown verges and at the entry point of Pantai Manis where the waves crash on the shore line, an ominous sign of the times looms into view – immigrant shacks.

There were about 30 of the wooden and zinc structures with fishing nets hanging from door frames and dilapidated boats moored nearby. Tattered flags of Malaysia and the Barisan Nasional fluttered in the breeze as though declaring the new kampung legitimate.

Just a month ago, the national news agency Bernama ran an article extolling the beach as paradise on earth.

It is “a popular seaside haunt in Papar,” said the report which also called it “a photographer’s paradise, especially when the sun sets, transforming the beach into a scenic and picturesque zone, a surefire hit with the tourists.”

In reality, it is nothing of the sort.

Perhaps a better moniker for Pantai Manis would be Buang Sayang, the former name of the state constituency that the ruling Barisan Nasional and the opposition will be fighting over tomorrow.