The Sarawak Dilemma

• 19 September 2019
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Remains mysterious. Despite the Federal representatives of Sarawak ruling coalition GPS moving to sit on the government side in the Assembly the essential Sarawak dilemma remains unresolved. It is this. How is it possible to accept the support of a party tainted by decades of corruption and other criminal activity when one has been elected to clean up the UMNO/BN shambles and restore democracy? No explanation, credible or otherwise, has been offered for this state of affairs.

More, and worse, successive Sarawak State governments and their component members have a record of decades of corruption and the destruction, entirely for personal profit, of the priceless asset, the rainforest. There has been little effort to hide all this and the assumption must be that those responsible in Sarawak relied on the protection of the corrupt BN federal government, which they enjoyed for a very long time.

While it may be both painful and unnecessary to dwell on all that it is much more difficult to understand why the PH administration has taken the course it has in regard to Sarawak. The smell of corruption pollutes the very air in the State and yet draws no official attention. It is not as though the political support provided by the GPS frogs in the Assembly is of any use. It is neither needed to retain a majority nor is it sufficient to provide a super majority for constitutional reform.

If PH has a rationale for its position in the matter, and with regard generally to the wholesale corruption in Sarawak, it would be sensible to lay it out, if only to see how far those who voted it into power feel about it.

The PH administration should also be taking notice of a growing groundswell of discontent in the State over the issue of whether the Malaysia arrangements have been fully respected. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of that argument it poses a potential threat to the unity, peace and good order of the country and so cant simply be ignored.

The PH government has acted swiftly and responsibly to deal with the criminal allegations against Najib Razak and his accomplices. There is no reason to delay over similar action in Sarawak. As with Najib and BN the evidence is there. All that is needed is to bring it, and the crooks, to justice.