[COLUMNIST] Kingmakers and the poor Sabahan

HERE we are again – Malaysia will be holding its 15th general election on the 19 November 2022.

Again, this election will be a historic moment for our country. There are 1386 candidates enter the fray contesting in the upcoming election of which 946 candidates will be contesting in the parliament seats and this is the highest candidacy ever recorded in the history of Malaysia election. Half of the 21.17 million new voters consists of young voters between the age of 18 – 39 years old.

Also, this is the first time also where we see there is no clear strong coalition enters the election battlefield. The political fluidity requires political parties to work with each other and highly likely will depend on other political parties to form government.

Political fluidity or in another word absent of dominant party, this gives rise to small parties to become ‘kingmaker’. A lot of political analysts point out that Sabah and Sarawak will be the kingmakers to form the next government. Sabah has 25 parliamentary seats while Sarawak features 31 seats.

Both states are in the top five list in terms of highest number of new registered voters. Sabah and Sarawak have 55.2 percent and 48.5 percent young voters respectively, between the age of 18 – 39 years old. So young voters play a major role in this upcoming election.

In the context of political fluidity, Barisan Nasional, Pakatan Harapan and Perikatan Nasional know the fact that they need to partner up with the East Malaysian political parties both BN and PH offered Deputy Prime Minister post if Sabah and Sarawak join them to form government. PH offers two DPM Posts while BN pitches three which later absent in their PADU manifesto.

Interestingly, Perikatan Nasional did not mention any deputy prime ministerial position for the East Malaysian states, but the manifesto spelled out would resolve the oil and gas issues with Petronas so that both states would gain a fairer share.

The Deputy Prime Minister position is obviously a political candy for politicians in Sabah and Sarawak. Many argued that DPM post does not hold significant power like those senior minister positions for example Minister of Finance, Education, Defense or Home Affairs, besides creation of the position is just a waste of money.

But for politicians especially from East Malaysia, this could be a dream to enjoys all the privileges like riders, luxurious government residence, private jet, security escorts, first class treatment, etc just like Prime Minister. Whether we need that position is not the main concern for most East Malaysians. Particularly for Sabahan, being a kingmaker should be an opportunity to raise policy demand. A demand that must address the perennial economic problem in this rich-resources state.

It is a broken record repeating this statement, Sabah is rich but poor in many aspects. The state is considered one of the economic powerhouse of the country looking from its contributions to the Malaysia GDP (usually ranked top five) however Sabah is lagged behind in many socioeconomic developments.

This state is the top three main contributor to agriculture sector with 16 percent annually to country’s GDP. Sabah produced 45.5 percent of crude palm oil to the nation and 42 percent of the petroleum come from this state, which has the capacity to produce more than 300,000 barrels per day. Sabah is also the third largest recipient of foreign investment in Malaysia, from January until September this year the Chief Minister announced RM9.9 billion worth of foreign investment.

This is nothing new, Sabah usually listed in top five for domestic and foreign direct investment, sadly most investments are categorised as mid-low value-added activities. In term of state revenue collections, Sabah has always recorded the second highest revenue collection for the past decades after Sarawak, even Selangor only collected around RM2billion to RM2.5billion for the last five years.

In 2021, Sabah recorded total state revenue RM5.4 billion, this is a record-breaking for the state after reaching the 5 billion mark, this thanks to sudden surge of palm oil and the five percent sales tax from oil and gas.

Paradoxically, this state is one of the poorest states in Malaysia. According to the findings from Department of Statistic Malaysia, the incidence of absolute poverty by state shows that Sabah recorded the highest percentage of 25.3 per cent higher than the national average of 8.4 percent, one out of four Sabahan are poor. Regardless pre or post pandemic-induced crisis Sabah remains the poorest state in Malaysia.

Now there are 25 parliamentary seats in Sabah, more than half of the people in the parliamentary seats are poor. Exception for Kota Kinabalu and Penampang, all parliamentary constituencies have double-digit poverty rate. The highest poverty rate recorded in federal constituency is Kota Marudu with 46.10 percent, this follows by Beluran and Kudat, 45 percent and 41 percent respectively.

Most of these federal constituencies have high unemployment rate, well it is obvious since Sabah has the highest number of unemployment rate in Malaysia which is 9 percent and youth unemployment reached it peaks at 17.3 percent, well above the 13.9% rate recorded nationwide by department of statistics.

Salary has shown deficit growth rate with negative 9 percent from 2019 to 2021, this put a greater pressure given the rise of food prices due to inflation, especially food inflation now at 7.2 percent.

Apart of poverty, income, employment there are other perennial problems such as infrastructures issues which deny access to education, clean water, road, healthcare, etc. The upcoming election is not just about winning the parliamentary seats, but the pertinent question is what can they do if the win the election? Given such vast amount of resources in the state, they can’t argue that ‘Malaya’ fault not giving us the money.

This narrative has been overused even silly things like potholes in the road. Now, way forward is, under such fluid political landscape, Sabah must come out with policy deal with whoever will form the government. This deal must be realistic and practical to achieve in one or two years, or gradually.

So, this rich-resource state needs a game-changer deals to revitalise our economic development. Politicians need to detail out all the important aspects what they must do, such as expanding downstream or midstream industries for petroleum, manufacturing, and agri-food sector, expansion of industrial park, internet, infrastructures, how to reduce unemployment and poverty rate.

The widely lauded MA63, which most people are aware but does not know what the details politicians are championing for. MA63 matters but detailing out with specificity is paramount. What slowing development in the state is due to centralisation and there is broad consensus among scholars that the key to regional development is decentralisation.

So now what need to be done is to detail out clearly what are the administrative functions and fiscal aspects that needed to be decentralised, setting up timeframe, KPI and monitoring mechanism. It would be great if they are clear MoU just like what the previous government did with PH.

Afterall talk is cheap, words must be inked in an agreement and honoured. This ‘kingmaker’ state should have game-changer parliamentarians to transform Sabah economic development

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* Firdausi Suffian - Senior Lecturer, Political Economy UiTM Sabah

** The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of Astro AWANI.