A Sarawak political scientist once said, no matter how much opposition, no matter how much hatred, no matter how fierce the attacks hurled at the candidates chosen by the government party, the people in the Melanau area will not easily surrender their dignity to the opposition.
They will still vote for the government party every time the election takes place.
Opposition and discontent as well as gossip exist in the coffee shops but will end at the ballot box.
It is true that the matter is a tradition for Melanau areas. Their dissatisfaction is only said aloud, but in their heart they remain loyal. And they will not let their hometown face the risk of not being developed – if they choose other than the government party at the ballot box.
In the 15th general election (GE15), this is believed to happen again. Dissatisfaction, anger and animosity only spread before the nomination process.
But when the party has made a decision, everyone will agree and stay united, for the sake of the beloved party, even though the wound in the heart is still festering. This is an open secret that is actually known to everyone, including the opposition.
There are three Melanau majority parliamentary seats being contested in this GE15. The seats are Mukah, Igan and Tanjong Manis.
The demographics of Mukah parliamentary seat show that this area has three state constituencies, namely Tellian, Balingian and Dalat. The Igan parliamentary seat consists of the Jemoreng and Daro constituencies while the Tanjong Manis parliamentary seat has the Kuala Rajang and Semop constituencies.
Currently, all of the state constituencies are controlled by the Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS), in addition to the three parliamentary seats before the Dewan Rakyat was dissolved – indicating how strong this area is as a GPS stronghold.
Mukah parliamentary seat lined up its incumbent, Datuk Hanifah Hajar Taib (GPS), who was challenged for the second time by Abdul Jalil Bujang (Pakatan Harapan).
In 2018, Hanifah garnered 13,853 votes to defeat Abdul Jalil, who is a Parti Keadilan Rkayat (PKR) veteran, with a majority of 7,000 votes.
It is reported that there is a strong wave of rejection in the area, because Hanifah rarely goes to the ground, but the feedback shows otherwise.
Hanifah has many ways to help the people, including through her assemblymen and area officers, because she herself is actually busy with affairs as Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Sabah and Sarawak).
After all, Hanifah’s character and friendliness in Parliament made her popular in the August house, while she forged close friendship with her assemblymen – as they are willing to help out if they are needed.
Based on the performance record, there is no real problem for Hanifah to not dominate the election this time, even though the number of voters has now increased to 46,951 people, out of which 32,288 are Melanau and 9,146 being Iban.
Meanwhile, in the Igan parliamentary seat, the number of voters is around 28,265 people, with 22,303 Melanau voters and 4,541 Iban voters.
Of those, Ahmad Johnie Zawawi should have no problem retaining his seat, let alone against an unpopular candidate.
He is facing a straight fight against PH-Amanah candidate – Andri Zulkarnaen Hamden. In GE14, he defeated Andri with a majority of 8,495 votes while Ahmad Johnie obtained 10,538 votes.
As such, Andri, with his campaigning and financial constraints, has to work hard if he wants to win the seat.
The writer actually had time to visit the Tanjong Manis parliamentary seat last week to see the atmosphere of the campaign.
It is very clear that the campaign situation is one-sided. There is no big campaign being carried out by PH Amanah’s candidate, Zainab Suhaili in the area, while it should be necessary considering that she is a new candidate.
On the other hand, the incumbent, Yusuf Abdul Wahab always fills his campaign days by visiting residents and attending scheduled programmes.
This is on top of the commitment shown by area assemblymen such as Datuk Len Talif Salleh and Datuk Abdullah Saidol, who are obviously very helpful, in addition to the flag and poster wars being placed in various strategic locations.
The initial expectation of political observers in the area is that if Mohamad Fadillah Sabali (PH Amanah) only garnered 2,728 votes in the last general election, before losing to Yusuf who brought home 11,402 votes, Zainab will experience a worse situation.
This area has 32,909 voters with most of them, (around 18,000 people)in Kuala Rajang state seat. With this one-sided campaign, both physically and on the virtual battlefield, it is certain that the GPS situation will not face any problem in continuing to retain its Melanau seats.
This victory should be a signal to all these incumbents, that they need to continue to work hard, and work diligently to serve the people’s will – as done brilliantly by all assemblymen in this area.
