In an ironic twist, the death of Dublin Unting Inggot, the Batang Ai assemblyman who succumbed yesterday after being comatose for nine months, has provided an opening for the redress of an error that owners of Native Customary Rights land among Sarawak’s Dayaks were left to rue since May 2000.
The death of Unting, which is from BN component Parti Rakyat Sarawak, paves the way for a by-election in this state seat in the Sarawak interior which is peopled mainly by the Iban, the majority group in the ethnic mosaic called the Dayak.
In recent years, the Iban, in areas where they are dominant, have been in dispute with logging and oil palm plantation companies over NCR land, an issue that flared up in Sarawak politics in May 2000 when the state assembly passed an amendment to the land code that had the effect of weakening Dayak claims to the NCR land.
PKR is expected to field Nicholas Bawin Anggat, whose unsuccessful exertions in 2005-2007 in registering a successor party to PBDS under the name of the Malaysian Dayak Congress, has inevitably led to membership in PKR.
PKR’s claims to representing Dayak aspirations in Sarawak will be tested in the Batang Ai by-election. To be sure the party had rebounded from the wipeout it suffered in its first foray in the state in the September 2001 elections, to a sole seat win in the May 2006 elections through Dominique Ng in Kuching. Last November Ng was joined in the assembly by Ngemah’s Gabriel Adit, a PBDS leader turned Independent, which brought PKR’s representation to two in the 71-seat assembly.
That number would be up by a digit should PKR’s Bawin come up against Nelson Munjah, the favored candidate of Deputy Chief Minister Alfred Jabu, the main Dayak powerbroker in the Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB), the dominant party in the Sarawak BN coalition.
Munjah, an Iban district officer in Lubuk Antu, the parliamentary constituency in which Batang Ai is located, is from Jabu’s state ward of Betong. Hence he will be viewed as an outsider, a disadvantage in the parochial politics of Sarawak’s interior. However, if the BN candidate is Naga Anak Alam, secretary to the late Unting and an Iban native of Lubuk Antu, the tussle will be close.
Bawin, 50, an Iban native of Lubuk Antu, would be hard to beat but in this constituency crisscrossed by three rivers on the banks of which are located some 100 Iban longhouses, logistics and a big campaign chest, the BN’s trump card, are decisive factors.
Despite lacking funds and personnel in the May 2006 state election, Bawin, a Mara business studies graduate, contesting under the banner of SNAP (Sarawak National Party), polled a respectable 2,489 votes to Unting’s 3,295.
With the more formidable resources of PKR at his command, Bawin would be a stronger contender in the upcoming by-election than he was in the 2006 poll. More certainly, his years as deputy president of the Council of Dayak Customs and Rights from 1992 to 2005 had gained him eminence in the community as an exponent of Dayak traditions and claims, especially in matters pertaining to NCR land.
His tenure in the Majlis came to an abrupt end after exertions on behalf of his community brought him into dispute with his employer, the Office of the Chief Minister, where the real centre of political gravity in the state lies.
That is why many reckon that reverberations from a PKR victory in Batang Ai will sweep across the political landscape, rendering the next state election, widely expected to be held much earlier than its due date in May 2011, a contest of pivotal importance to Sarawak.-Din Merican
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