PETALING JAYA: Independence from Malaysia may be an attractive talking point for candidates and parties in the Sarawak elections, but it’s not going to be enough to swing voters on its own, an analyst said.
University of Tasmania professor James Chin said that while “independence” as a concept had been bandied about by various parties, there was little clarity on what it would mean in practice.
“This narrative is simple to understand and highly emotional, so it is effective for politicians from all sides to use it. But it doesn’t swing any votes by itself,” he said at an online forum hosted by LCMS Malaysiana.
He said it had to be used in conjunction with other policy stances because it is not an effective platform in isolation.
“This is why I don’t believe PBK (Parti Bumi Kenyalang) will do very well in this election,” he said, as the party was running on a single-issue platform of pro-independence for Sarawak.
Chin also said that the biggest changes for Sarawak would likely have to be driven by the next crop of state leaders.
“The only political changes that you will find in Sarawak will be long term ones, and they will have to be led by the new leader class, who will have to come up with innovations to disrupt the existing order,” he said, pointing to the money-driven election culture that had allowed the same players to hold power for decades.
Parti Aspirasi Sains founder Kenneth Chai agreed, and said that rural-urban migration had seen many young people expanding their worldviews and better understanding the problems the state faced.
Many of these Sarawakians were now becoming aware of the ways corruption had shaped the state over the last 50-odd years, and could see how it had held them and their families back.
“They know if they don’t change things, their children will suffer the same fate, and they might not be as lucky as they were to get educated and attain social mobility. - FMT
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