When folks feel you have overstayed your welcome, that you have been there for up to 20 years and you have no more new ideas to offer, or you have got enough to see you retiring in comfort, they have a nice way of telling why you should call it a day.
They don’t tell you to your face you have a bad reputation, but they say: “Gap amai nuan YB, lalu empai baka kelia – sigat, agi tau nganu” (You are handsome, YB, just like those days – macho, bitingly attractive).
But what they really mean is you are a crocodile and they worry for their wives and daughters for as long as you are around.
Or if they don’t talk about you but instead talk about the new candidate prospective as someone “tau adat beburung, adat berantu, adat muai pemali enggau muai sial” (knowledgeable in art and customs of augury, of appeasing the souls of the dead, of cleansing taboos and getting rid of ill fortunes) they probably mean you are not the right person for the job.
Not anymore, anyway. They have a better person.
Why you are not the right person, you should know, but one thing for sure is, the people have had enough of you pretending to be what you are not – that you are not their champion that you have been claiming to be.
How could you be their champion if you have not addressed their problems enough?
You have had 20 years or more to bring about the necessary changes to improve their living standards but the roads, electricity and water are still not there. You see, you have failed even to give them basic amenities.
Then you did the unimaginable. You pitted family members against family members, brothers against brothers and cousins against cousins. Folks quarrelled, breaking up longhouses and making them shorter.
You played divide and rule politics, giving to one but denying the other. Consequently, some villages and longhouses just don’t see any form of progress because you chose to totally neglect them for nothing less than some selfish, vindictive reasons.
You who are given taxpayers’ money in the millions with which to help the people, yet you abuse your position and power not on your own strength, which you never have had, but on the strength of BN.
Yes, that’s the inherent weakness of BN. There is too much dead wood in the BN – people who have no strength of their own but continue to get voted into office on the strength of the ruling coalition.
Similar deadwood and divide-and-rule politicians are found in BN-friendly parties. They too have no strength of their own, which is why when they are faced with the prospect of being thrown out of the BN, they sing no other tunes but lullabies in hopes that the state BN chairman, Chief Minister Adenan Satem, would be lulled into slumber to dream of the angels in the likes of William Mawan, Wong Soon Koh and Sylvester Entri.
But before that happens, let’s make him a cup of hot, black, bitter coffee to keep him awake so that he gets to see the other side of the coin.
Yang Amat Berhormat Ketua Menteri, not a few of the state seats with BN and BN-friendly parties are held by assemblymen who have overstayed their welcome not just now but as far back as a term or two in the past but they keep coming back because BN has a way of making sure they continue to be elected.
BN is really doing a disservice to the people by forcing them to vote for these YBs. These gentlemen have failed the people in the last 20 or so years, they can’t be expected to do any magic to turn things around in the next five years.
Giving them five years will only delay the transformation the people badly need to catch up with the rest of the pack.
Guys like Mawan, Soon Koh and Entri would have made all the difference if they had been effective people’s representatives, but they hadn’t.
Courageous, wily politicians they are, jumping parties, breaking promises and principles, and saying this but doing that.
But people-centric assemblymen they aren’t. They have failed their respective electorates, which is the main reason why opposition against them has been building up.
In Bawang Assan, Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) sees Lau Cheng Kong, whose daughter is an elected representative, as Soon Koh’s able replacement.
In Bengoh (which will be called Mambong soon) SUPP is said to have given the go ahead to Dr Benedict Poris PhD to work in the newly delineated constituency with the full blessing of several top guns of Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu, the real power broker in the area.
In Pakan Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party (SPDP) has named Dr Jawie Jenggut to replace Mawan. Why?
Simply because Pakan folk no longer want to help Mawan carry his “personal baggage”. In Jawie, they see a better and more qualified person.
In Marudi SPDP has named Dr Penguang Manggil PhD in place of Sylvester Entri, also because Penguang is seen as a better and more qualified person compared to the incumbent who has tried hard to portray himself as the people’s champion but is in fact “a political chameleon”.
Folks in the villages and longhouses do not boycott government functions even if they are not happy with their assemblymen. They would still come in full force because it is not their culture to embarrass their guests, especially if their guest is the chief minister.
That was what they did the last time Adenan visited Pakan and Marudi.
They did not tell Adenan then that Mawan and Sylvester must be replaced. That would be too rude.
But Adenan may have noticed no one came up to him to say he should declare Mawan was still good for another term.
Adenan’s silence on the Pakan candidacy issue was met with an equally silent welcome.
When Adenan said Sylvester looked the most winnable candidate for Marudi, folks clapped their hands because, one, they did not want to embarrass the Chief Minister, and two, because they still have a few months to tell him they have already got Penguang to become BN’s flagbearer come the next state election.
If all these have escaped Adenan’s scrutiny, he should know them now.-The Ant Daily
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