The Ninth Sarawak State Election is approaching. Nomination has taken place last Tuesday, seeing all seats apart from 2 being contested.

Keadilan, Sarawak National Party (SNAP) and Malaysian Dayak Congress (MDC) have formed a Sarawak Solidarity Front (BBS). Thanks to an election pact, BBS components and DAP will not fight against each other, as disclosed by Wan Zainal, Keadilan Sarawak Liaison Chief in a press conference that I’ve attended, on Dec 23, 2005 in Hotel Istana, KL, on the sideline of 2nd Keadilan National Congress.

Meanwhile, Pas is also given a seat to contest in Beting Maro, and surely we must thank them for saving Keadilan from one more defeat. Maybe we don’t need to go that far, but a blogger just told me, “Hope they hilang deposit!”

So what’s the focus for this election? When we asked ourselves the same question prior to Pengkalan Pasir by-election last year, I knew what we want. We have to defend Malaysia’s only non-BN state government, which was a difficult challenge, given Pas’ mediocre track record, but we wanted to choose the lesser evil, and the keyword was “Democracy”. What about this time?

Sarawak politic is a battle without ideology. For ages we’ve seen BN legislators of different camps, usually divided along ethnic lines, fighting against each other for larger share of cake, in the forms of government construction contract or logging consessions, among others. The Ming Court Power Struggle Affair had nothing to do with democracy, mind you.

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