Electoral Dynamics in Sarawak: Contesting Developmentalism and Rights

by Meredith L. Weiss

Malaysia’s 13th general election, held 5 May 2013, saw an unprecedentedly close race between the incumbent Barisan Nasional (National Front, BN) and Pakatan Rakyat (People’s Alliance, Pakatan) coalitions. For the first time in Malaysian history, a challenger coalition not only kept the BN from regaining the two-thirds parliamentary super-majority it had lost in the previous election, in 2008, but eked out a slim majority of the popular vote. While many Malaysian election is a big event, this one in particular merits close scrutiny. The present volume offers evidence and analysis with which to probe both the merits of common interpretations of who voted how, and why, and to suggest new readings on Malaysian politics.

120 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 8, 2017

About the author

Meredith L. Weiss is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University at Albany, State University of New York. She has held visiting fellowships or professorships in Australia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore, as well as the US. Weiss is the author of Student Activism in Malaysia: Crucible, Mirror, Sideshow (Cornell SEAP/NUS, 2011) and Protest and Possibilities: Civil Society and Coalitions for Political Change in Malaysia (Stanford, 2006), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters. She is also co-editor of Global Homophobia: States, Movements, and the Politics of Oppression (Illinois, 2013), Student Activism in Asia: Between Protest & Powerlessness (Minnesota, 2012), Political Violence in South and Southeast Asia: Critical Perspectives (UNU, 2010) and Social Movements in Malaysia: From Moral Communities to NGOs (Routledge Curzon, 2003). Her research addresses political mobilisation and contention, the politics of development, civil society, nationalism and ethnicity and electoral change in maritime Southeast Asia.

Reviews

[Sharon]

This is a focused collection of research papers on a single topic. Most of the detail was lost on me because my knowledge of Sarawak history and geography is poor, but I'm glad I read it anyway, and it helped me get some context on conversational comments about "the opposition party" and "Native Customary Rights." What I found striking was the casual, throwaway manner in which two of the researchers talked about vote-buying by a particular candidate and named the price range for votes in that region. It seems to be a totally open matter based on the way it's described. That makes me wonder what else I take for granted that isn't spelled out here.

[Nicole Siaw]

The book provided case studies in 4 different locations in Sarawak (arguably) representative of the sentiments in the rest of Sarawak in the 2016 state elections.

The areas looked at are: Tupong (a Malay/Melanau/Muslim majority urban area near Kuching), Stakan (a relatively rural area with a high postal voting population), Repok and Maradong (semi-rural Chinese mixed bumiputera areas), and Baa Kelalan (the seat of Baru Bian, one of the few PKR candidates that won against the BN in a rural area despite the backdrop of a popular state government).

The book describes the sentiments among the local community in 2016 well.The authors attempted to explain the main factors influencing voting in 2016 - disatisfaction against corruption (1MDB) in the federal government, a popular state government under the late Adenan Statem that championed for stronger state autonomy (dubbed 'the Adenan Factor'), the politics of development (that is, how different parties contesting in the state elections 'sold' what development looks like for their community). The case studies provided insight into how different communities viewed these issues: urban vs rural areas, government vs opposition parties, to some extent how race and religion influences more nuanced views on these issues.

Some of the political alliances since then have changed and some of the sentiments here are no longer as relevant in 2024. It would be interesting for a future study to compare how sentiments have changed in Sarawak over time.

[S S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Balanced analysis of the social and electoral dynamics at play