KOTA KINABALU: It wasn't so long ago that Sabah government leaders trained their guns on migrant workers from Indonesia and the Philippines who became “new Malaysians”. Short of murder, the leaders blamed them for all the state's woes.
But over the next few days, these new Malaysians will be wooed for their votes. And the reason is that they are among the 25,582 registered voters in the Batu Sapi parliamentary constituency.
Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS), a Barisan Nasional (BN) component party, is contesting the seat. The irony is that PBS is a sworn enemy of these “foreigners”.
The tables have turned. BN and PBS need the votes of these so-called workers of foreign origin or new Malaysians as they hold the key to a comfortable BN victory in the Nov 4 election.
Local politicians estimate the number of new Malaysians at 5,000 among the 25,582 eligible voters on the electoral rolls that were updated on Oct 9 and will now be used in Batu Sapi
Election observers noted that the Umno election machinery is actively trying to locate this group of voters, half of whom are believed to be staying outside the constituency.
If they are successful, Umno could easily claim on paper to have about 6,500 voters including 1,500 postal votes in the bag prior to polling day. This gives PBS-BN a head-start before nominations on Oct 26, said a local politician.
PBS journey
The new election rolls, however, shows a shortfall of about 500 voters compared to the one used in the 2008 general election.
Batu Sapi has 25,582 voters, of whom 24,047 are ordinary voters and 1,535 postal voters, with 15,099 or 59.02% of the voters being Muslim Bumiputeras, 689 non-Muslim Bumiputeras (2.69%), 9,737 Chinese (38.06%) and others, 57 (0.22%).
Whichever way one looks at it, the coming election is incongruous for PBS, the born-again BN component party.
The Christian-dominated PBS ruled Sabah for nine years from 1985 to 1994. It first joined the BN a year after toppling the Berjaya government of Harris Salleh.
After a troubled relationship with the ruling coalition and on the eve of the 1990 general election, its president Joseph Pairin Kitingan abandoned BN and teamed up with Semangat '46 led by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah.
Then Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the BN chairman, described the PBS move as a stab in the back and ordered Umno's entry into Sabah where it has since become the dominant political party.
PBS won that election comfortably but its coalition partners at the federal level failed to deliver the goods.
In 1994, Pairin, facing growing federal government pressure for his BN betrayal and tied up with legal problems over “negotiated” contracts, called for state election days before the verdict in his corruption trial.
PBS again won with a narrow margin, taking 25 seats against the BN's 23.
However, due to defections by members of PBS, such as Bernard Dompok and Joseph Kurup, who formed new parties aligned to BN shortly after the election, PBS was forced out of power resulting in the BN forming the state government.
The outcome of this election and the defections gave birth to the term “katak” (frog) to explain the “jump” from party to party by politicians who had campaigned under a different party.
One of those who remained with Pairin after several of his assemblymen jumped ship was the late Edmund Chong Ket Wah who allegedly turned down large sums of money as an enticement to quit the floundering opposition party.
Phantom voters
Stunned by their removal from power, PBS leaders claimed that their poor showing in the election was because large numbers of migrants from the Philippines and Indonesia were hastily empowered to vote.
They claimed that the “extraordinary” population growth during the last few decades with illegal immigrants said to have been given citizenship based on false statutory declarations under the so-called “Project M or Project Mahathir” has changed Sabah’s ethnic make-up.
Politicians are said to have made use of “phantom voters” to decide the outcome of Sabah elections.
PBS supreme council member, Chong Eng Leong, now with PKR, marshalled an impressive array of facts and figures in a documentation of the illegal immigrants and phantom voters.
"It is feared that there will be 'a reverse takeover' of the state one day by foreigners, that is, if it is not already happening," he said in a book “Lest we Forget” he published recently.
After sitting on the sidelines for 12 years as an opposition party and shrilly but futilely protesting the steadily growing presence of migrant workers in the state, Pairin brought the party back into the BN fold once again in 2002.
In 2001, the High Court in Kota Kinabalu even ordered former Sabah chief minister Yong Teck Lee, the Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) president, to vacate his state assembly seat, ruling that he won it in 1999 with the help of “phantom voters”.
Fast-forward to the present time, and Chong, who was by now PBS treasurer-general, won the Batu Sapi parliamentary seat uncontested.
In the 2008 general election, political observers said Pairin ironically depended on Umno's Muslim votes for the same seat when Chong had to fend off independent candidate, Chung Ong Wing.
Chong won the seat in the 2008 general election by a 3,708-majority after polling 9,479 votes against Chung's creditable 5,771 votes, nearly all of which were said to have come from the Chinese community.
Wooing Chinese voters
In this by-election, Sandakan politicians believe the Chinese will continue their rebellious streak given the anti-Umno sentiment at federal and state levels.
Small businessmen from the Chinese community are also chaffing at not getting a fair share of contracts from the administration of Chief Minister Musa Aman, the Sabah Umno chairman.
One Sandakan businessman had alleged that Musa and his boys are scooping even minor projects in the east coast for themselves.
He asked: “Do you know what Umno stands for? … Under Musa No Opportunities."
Musa, the neighbouring Sibuga assemblyman and election director of Batu Sapi election, is expected to spend lavishly to woo not only the Muslim votes but also the Chinese, given the disillusionment there.
He will be using his Sandakan hometown Chinese business partners, Sabah MCA chief Edward Khoo, former SAPP deputy president, Raymond Tan who is now in Gerakan and party-less deputy chief minister Peter Pang to bring in the Chinese votes.
The first to benefit will be the Chinese independent schools. A dinner has already been planned in Sandakan tonight for distribution of the funds.
One political observer said the pressure is on Musa to deliver.
"He will be in a tight spot if he fails to get a bigger majority" in this by-election, the 13th in the country and the first in Sabah since the 2008 general election.
To win comfortably, BN will have to get at least more than half of the Chinese votes and three-quarters of the Muslim votes in a multi-cornered fight with SAPP and PKR candidates in the fray and with independents also expected to be fielded.
Pakatan Rakyat has appointed Sabah DAP chairman and Kota Kinabalu MP Hiew King Cheu to make sure that the Chinese votes do not go to PBS and the SAPP.
SAPP will name their candidate today and PBS and PKR candidates will be named tomorrow.
Chong's death earlier this month in a road accident triggered the Nov 4 by-election.
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