DAP needs to stick to Chinese areas

By Daniel John Jambun

After the recent Sarawak general election, we have seen how the DAP managed to gain substantial number of new seats, causing an embarrassing upset for BN’s SUPP. This gain gave DAP a lot overconfidence and the party started thinking it could make inroads into the rural, native-majority areas. In a sort of a launch to spread its wings into the interior, DAP Sarawak ’s Dayak Consultative Council (DCC) organized a seminar to be held in Mile 17, Kuching on October 10, 2011 . The seminar was “aimed to prepare for DAP’s move from strictly urban Chinese-majority areas into Bumiputera and rural areas in the coming parliamentary election and to supposedly provide related consultative services to rural folk,” but embarrassingly, nobody turned up except for the organizers!

At a press conference after the event was cancelled, DAP Sarawak chief, Wong Ho Long, admitted it would be an uphill task for DAP to penetrate the Sarawak rural areas in the coming parliamentary election. I believe, the DAP leaderships in the Peninsular and in Sabah and Sarawak should take this seminar failure as a very important lesson. The party needs to be rational and realize that it simply cannot get the support of the natives, period! It can try, spend money, and use every ounce of its energy to influence the Dayaks in Sarawak and the KDMs in Sabah , but we can almost guarantee, they would be wasting its money, energy and time. It is not my intention to downgrade the party as my fellow fighters in the opposition, but we all need to take a reality check, see ourselves in the mirror (as the DAP chief of Sabah had once told Datuk Dr. Jeffrey), and accept what is fact. We cannot win sits on a fantasy.

You see, DAP is a Chinese party, no matter how we look at it, or no matter how the DAP itself tries to reinvent its image. The people still sees it as a Chinese party, even with the infusion of several KDM middle-rank leaders. As such, the KDM leaders in the party may need to reconsider their political priorities, and ask themselves it they are not just chasing shadows they will never catch. As good examples of the DAP fantasy is its belief that it can field candidates in areas like Tamparuli, Kiulu and Tuaran and win. The problem with politics is that a lot of overconfidence is born out of coffeeshop talks, small and sporadic receptions, and psychological boosts from personal encouragements made out of politeness. But the realistic leader knows the facts behind all these illusions, hence refrains from overshooting its target. In Sarawak it is dreaming of wresting away the Bidayuh-majority parliamentary constituencies of Mambong, Mas Gading, and Serian. As someone who was involved in the seat allocation negotiation for the opposition prior top the 2008 general election, I cannot forget how the DAP was insisting on contesting in all areas. This led to a breakdown in the negotiation, causing us all to go for free-for-all contest. Will DAP be having the same attitude in the next round of negotiation? If DAP goes ahead with these plan, all it will be able to do is maybe break the opposition votes and give victory to BN in Dayak and KDM-majority areas! With the incident of the embarrassing failure of the party’s DCC seminar in Kuching, DAP should take it as a wake-up call, a good reason for a reality check and re-strategizing for the sake of the opposition struggle. 

DAP also needs to take into account the fact that the people of Sabah and Sarawak are already caught up in the UBF’s Borneo Agenda, which aims to reject Peninsular-based parties in order to start a new 2-system 1-country governance in Malaysia in which the Borneo states will be having greater rights and autonomy. DAP need to ask itself how it will have to adjust to this new powerful political thinking among the voters in the Borneo states.