Sarawak election: Pakatan's 'Civil War' threatens to derail its mission

The 'civil war' between political allies, PKR and DAP in the Sarawak state elections certainly makes for great drama.

After much talk about attaining cohesiveness in order to deny Chief Minister Tan Sri Adenan Satem's Barisan Nasional team two thirds majority, the overlapping of candidates in six seats goes to show they are a long way from there.

With rural seats in this state election identified as the real kingmakers, this latest development from Pakatan Harapan certainly threatened their plans to capture the hearts of rural voters en route to increasing the opposition's representation in the 82-member Sarawak state assembly.

Nevertheless, this is only the first setback for Pakatan Harapan as the race within the 12-day campaign period has just started.

As the saying goes, politics is all about the art of possibilities.

It is too early to write both of these parties off despite the magnitude of their disagreement as both the parties had taken significant steps in making a breakthrough in the rural areas.

DAP's Impian Sarawak programme definitely help promote them in the eyes of the rural folks in the Land of the Hornbills.

Other than establishing clean water supply as well as basic road access, this initiative served as a preview to what the party could do if it ever forms a part of the Sarawak state government.

Despite all that, PKR also appealed to a segment of rural voters who were affected by the NCR land disputes.

A number of prominent lawyers within the party took it upon themselves to ensure that they are the champions to those affected by land grabs.

The effort that has been put into by both parties leading into this crucial state election put both of them at odds over who should be the dominant party in the rural area.

Of course, PKR was given the trust to 'handle' these important areas for the previous state election back in 2011 but they performed dismally.

With only 3 seats won out of the 49 seats contested, DAP has used that statistic as the one of the factors why PKR should give some of the rural seats to the socialist party.

Numbers do not lie and even the state PKR chairman Baru Bian finds it hard to dismiss that absymal statistic.

Nevertheless, Baru felt that PKR has only grown in strength and their demand of 40 seats is what he felt to be reasonable.

According to political analyst Associate Professor Dr Faizal Hazis of Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS), despite the advancement made by opposition parties, the fact remains that some rural seats are impenetrable as of this moment.

"However, there are several seats that are favourable to the opposition if it was a straight fight.

"Now, I guess the fate of these seats still hang in the balance," said Dr Faizal.

Nevertheless, he said not all is over for the opposition.

"Barisan Nasional has similar troubles of their own.

"It is too close to call for up to 22 seats for this state election based on how the political developments turned out," he added.

I guess we can only get the answer on May 7 then.

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*Hafiz is in Kuching Sarawak covering the 11th Sarawak State Election for Astro AWANI. Readers are welcome to share your opinion with him at hafiz_marzukhi@astro.com.my

**The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author's and do not necessarily reflect the view of Astro AWANI.