KUALA LUMPUR: An Umno on the 'death-bed' as described by PAS is asserting itself in Sabah and muscling its way into Sarawak.
Bellowing in the land below the wind is a rising rebellion that Umno president and Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak is having trouble quelling. The reason according to a source, is partition politics and money.
Within the Umno fraternity in Sabah, alignments are consolidating itself and loyalties are being negotiated, as Umno-BN looks to the Borneo states as its saviour, post the 13th general election.
Despite Najib’s recent order to grassroots leaders in Sabah to focus on the needs of the people, the taunts and behind the scenes political scheming continues.
What is now public knowledge is that at least two divisions in Sabah Umno have abandoned 'old values' and decorum.
They have demanded that long-standing BN component member Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) return its seats in Merotai, Tawau and Tanjung Kapor in Kudat to Umno.
What is simmering and likely to erupt soon are similar calls from other divisions aligned to Chief Minister Musa Aman, Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, Defence Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and Higher Education Minister Khaled Nordin.
Will Najib be able to contain billionaire Musa and his powerful Kuala Lumpur connections?
Can Musa’s billions fuel a landslide victory for Umno in Sabah in the 13th general election or will the burgeoning opposition which is hammering away at the state government for squandering the state’s wealth and sovereignty, and plunging its citizens into the abyss of poverty, succeed in denying them a majority?
So many questions and so little time, if rumours are anything to go by.
Pundits are betting that Najib will call for polls as early as October or November which would apparently work well for Sarawak, where Chief Minister Taib Mahmood is battling his own set of ghosts.
Apart from the fact that ‘everyone in and outside of BN’ wants him out, his latest headache is stemming from recent disclosures on the blogsphere of his immense wealth abroad.
This coupled with his commonly known disdain for natives, the rampant rape of Sarawak’s rainforest by government sanctioned logging concessionaires and the state’s disregard for native customary rights land could dent his support.
BN’s popularity at 64 percent
Unlike Sabah where Muslims are now majority, allegedly as a result of legalising illegals under Project IC aka Project Dr M, Sarawak’s demographics are a little more challenging for BN.
Just under 50 percent of Sarawak’s population are native Dayaks, with some 26 percent Chinese and the balance Malay Melanaus.
A recent Merdeka Centre survey put BN’s popularity at 64 percent but whether this will translate on the ground is something else.
Since its loss to DAP in the Sibu by-election in May 2010, Sarawak BN’s oldest partner Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) had openly declared that the next state election would be a great challenge and expects to see some seats fall.
In the 2006 state polls, 71 seats were up for grabs. The opposition won seven state seats and one parliamentary seat (excluding Sibu).
This time round it is aiming to, at the least, deny BN its two-thirds majority. But they may be hard-pressed to achieve this given Sarawak’s vast terrain.
Confident state ministers declared that the opposition cannot touch their rural vote bank and have rubbished warnings by mushrooming agrarian political parties with “they are no threats.”
But wise man Taib is not taking any chances this time, not with an empowered opposition taking pains to detail his impriopriety.
For the first time Taib was lukewarm at a recent suggestion by Pasir Gudang Umno division to set up a Sarawak Umno branch for the 40,000-odd Sarawakians living and working in Johor.
In an unprecedented move Taib, whose Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB) is the backbone of Sarawak BN, said Umno and PBB shared the same policy under the BN banner.
Strangely enough Taib, who had until now fobbed off Umno’s persistent attempts at moving into Sarawak said: “Why not, if it is for better management.
“After all, PBB is a member of BN and quite close to Umno in most of its activities because we happen to fight for the same group of people.”
For the record Najib had, during PBB's March convention, openly said that Umno will not move into Sarawak so long as PBB is relevant, but then again he was referring to Umno walking into Sarawak through the front door.
“But we all know Umno’s speciality, its reverse takeovers…like in Perak. There is also the issue of who is doing the muscling, it's not Najib's man!” said the source.
No comments:
Post a Comment