James Chin says the late Abdul Taib Mahmud actively worked to split the Dayaks after surviving a plot to oust him.
James Chin of the University of Tasmania said Taib actively worked to split the Dayak community into “as many parties as possible” after Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS), then led by federal minister Leo Moggie, joined in an attempt to oust him.
“From 1987 onwards, one of Taib’s main aims was to split the Dayak into as many parties as possible. Since then, the Dayaks have never been united politically,” Chin told FMT.
“The Sarawak National Party (SNAP), a Dayak-majority party, was the mother of all Dayak parties. All the new Dayak parties after SNAP were formed by SNAP leaders,” he said.
Dubbed the Ming Court Affair, the 1987 political crisis saw Taib survive an attempt led by former chief minister Abdul Rahman Ya’kub – his uncle and predecessor who also led Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu – to unseat him.
On March 9 that year, 27 assemblymen, including four ministers and three deputy ministers, signed a no-confidence motion against Taib.
Taib responded by dissolving the state assembly the following day for snap elections. Barisan Nasional, led by Taib, won 28 of the 48 seats, enabling him to not only retain the chief minister’s post but also remove all Rahman’s supporters in the government.
Taib was to retain power until 2014 when he resigned to take over as Yang di-Pertua Negeri.
But the bad blood between him and the Dayaks only thickened. In his government, Dayak parties were given only minor roles.
Chin was responding to remarks by Julau MP and Parti Bangsa Malaysia president Larry Sng in a podcast about the political division among the Dayaks.
In the Tuak Talk podcast, Sng warned that the community risked losing political influence despite being the majority ethnic group in Sarawak due to its leaders’ inability to accept differences in political and leadership styles.
He called for a change in mindset, saying it started “from the heart” and involved inclusion of people from all sides, even “people you don’t agree with”.
The Dayaks — Sarawak’s main indigenous group loosely comprising the Iban, Bidayuh and Orang Ulu — account for around 40% of Sarawak’s total population.
Not a monolithic community
Arnold Puyok of Universiti Malaysia Sarawak said mobilising political support based purely on ethnicity is insufficient in Sarawak, where ethnic and regional identities, personalities and patronage politics all influence voter support.
He pointed out that an Iban voter, for example, would not necessarily back an Iban candidate out of ethnic solidarity alone, as regional loyalty and personal or patronage considerations often carried equal, if not greater, weight.
“Compounding this is the reality that the Dayak community itself is not monolithic. It comprises numerous sub-ethnic groups, each with distinct ethnic aspirations of their own,” said the visiting fellow at the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre.
Both Chin and Puyok expressed scepticism about the possibility of Dayak unity, with Puyok saying that it might not happen unless there was a genuine revival of “Dayakism” — a renewed sense of shared Dayak identity and purpose that could command broad support across the various sub-ethnic groups.
“’Without that unifying force, the structural divisions that have long weakened Dayak political representation are unlikely to be resolved,” he added.
Chin added that the Dayaks did not have a senior political leader who could command respect across all parties.
“The Dayak community has too many chiefs. Not enough warriors, too many generals, not enough soldiers,” he added. - FMT
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