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Sarawak's renewed political hopes

By Sim Kwang Yang
editor@thenutgraph.com
16 Dec 08 : 8.00AM

Illustration of Dayak people, dated 1864 (Public domain; source: Wikipedia.org)

SARAWAK'S Dayaks seldom feature with any significance in the national imagination of Malaysia, and certainly do not make headlines in the national media. This reflects the political marginalisation of the Dayaks in their home state.

The Dayaks collectively make up nearly half the state's population, and by the logic of communal politics, they should dominate politics in Sarawak. They did, briefly, during the early years of Merdeka, when their political vehicle was the Sarawak National Party, or SNAP. The president of the party then, Datuk Stephen Kalong Ningkan — an Iban — was the first chief minister of Sarawak, serving from July 1963 to September 1966. He was removed from office by a federally initiated Declaration of Emergency and a constitutional amendment resulting from a protracted constitutional crisis. Since 1970, the office of the chief minister has been held by two Melanau Muslims.

The dream of Dayak leaders since has been the restoration of what they consider their political glory: the installation of a Dayak chief minister. Formed in 1983 as a splinter group from SNAP, the Parti Bangsa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS) was the vehicle for this mission. The PBDS applied and was accepted as a member of the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition.

In the Ming Court affair of 1987, the PBDS left the BN and joined forces with Persatuan Rakyat Malaysia Sarawak (Permas) to form the opposition Maju alliance. They mounted a credible challenge to the BN in the subsequent state elections, but failed to dislodge Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud from office. Campaigning on the nationalist slogan of Dayakism, they won 15 seats, but eight of their elected representatives then defected to join SNAP and Taib's Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB).

After another unsuccessful election in 1991, the PBDS finally ran out of gas and rejoined the BN in 1994.

More power struggles

A power struggle within SNAP in 2002 led to its deregistration and the formation of the Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party (SPDP), which was registered three days after application.

In 2004, there was another power struggle, this time within the PBDS, following the retirement of their long-serving president, Tan Sri Leo Moggie. Like SNAP, the PBDS was also deregistered; the new splinter, Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS), was formed and registered on the same day. One year later, there was an open acrimonious power struggle within the PRS, and it was resolved only after April 2008.

Tan Sri Leo Moggie (Source: uniten.edu.my) You have to wonder at the power and efficiency of the Registrar of Societies over the fate of political parties. Does this suggest that there are unseen federal government hands working in collusion with the Sarawak chief minister?

And if you've had the patience to follow this tale of Dayak politics in Sarawak thus far, what kind of impression would you now have of Dayak politicians?

Many of these Dayak politicians are my long-time personal friends, and I would cringe to criticise them in public. I also have a lot of respect for many well-known Dayak leaders, especially Datuk Seri Daniel Tajem. Whatever his faults may be, he has shown tremendous strength of character and personal integrity in his long and difficult political career.

Nevertheless, one has to painfully conclude that in the evolution of Dayak politics, personal ambition, vested interests, and the inability to forge consensus have fractured and destroyed one Dayak political vehicle after another. Today, they are divided into so many miniscule Dayak parties that they have no hope of realising the dream of having a Dayak chief minister. The nationalist spirit of Dayakism has been all but self-extinguished.

That is a pity. The Dayaks are now wallowing in socioeconomic backwardness, and some consider themselves third-class citizens after the Malay-Melanau Sarawakians and the Chinese Sarawakians. Hundreds of thousands of Dayak youths have left their homes in search of better job prospects in Singapore and West Malaysia, leaving the old and the very young in the longhouses. The rural communities have been stripped of their youthful forces for regeneration. In pockets of abject poverty, alcoholism is rife.

Sarawak's new dawn?

Recently though, the Dayak community among the educated class and the longhouse folk have been humming with a new kind of excitement.

Slightly more than a month ago, during a dinner in Sibu organised by Friends of Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), 4,000 people of all races turned up to welcome Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim. They were also witness to a public ceremony in which Gabriel Adit Demong, the current independent Ngemah state assemblyperson and former vice-president of the now-defunct PBDS, submitted his application to join the PKR. His application form was accompanied by 12,000 others.

Another mammoth 6,000-strong sit-down dinner was planned for 14 Dec 2008 in Miri. The grand finale should culminate in Kuching on 19 Dec, where 8,000 people are expected to turn up to welcome Anwar. The people of Sarawak are now stretching their necks forward to see whether there will be more elected representatives and Dayak voters joining the PKR.

The term of the present Sarawak state assembly will not expire until 2011. There is current speculation, however, that the next state elections may be held as early as 2009. The success of the PKR in the 8 March 2008 general election has made the party attractive to Dayak politicians and their supporters. (© Tryatna Anto / Dreamstime)

But the PKR is a multiracial party. It would mean that the PKR and Dayakism are mutually exclusive. Perhaps the brand of Dayakism portrayed by the PBDS ought to be laid to rest anyway. Only by building meaningful bridges with other ethnic communities can the Dayaks lift themselves from their political and socioeconomic limbo. In that context, the PKR is indeed a suitable vehicle for the redemption of Dayak politics.

To dethrone Taib and replace the Sarawak BN as the next state government, there must be a congruence of all opposition forces within the state. The divisive bickering between opposition blocs must now indeed end for a new dawn of democracy in the Land of the Hornbill.

The Dayaks of Sarawak will then make headlines again

Hostile takeover

AS HEADMAN, Ladon anak Edieh allowed a state agency to start an agriculture pioneering project on his community’s land in Sungai Bawan in the Mukah division of Sarawak.

That was in the mid-1970s when the Sarawak Land Development Board (SLDB) introduced one of the earliest oil palm cultivation schemes on Iban communal land.

Rumah Ladon (Iban longhouses are named after the headmen) and 21 other longhouse communities agreed to the project, based on the official guarantee that respected their native customary rights (NCR) over the land.

The communities were duly consulted and SLDB even conducted rituals according to the people’s adat in obtaining consent for use of the land.

In 1975, it was agreed that a tasih (a token sum) of RM50 per acre for a total area of 9,800 acres for a period of 25 years was to be paid by SLDB. The villagers understood that the land would be returned to them upon expiry of the lease in 2000.

The Ibans of Sungai Bawan, Mukah, Sarawak, protesting the alienation of their land. The communities of 22 longhouses later filed a suit, naming the Sarawak State Government among the defendants. – Picture courtesy of WONG MENG CHUO

Years later, the villagers discovered that the Sarawak government issued a new provisional lease in 1989 to SLDB that not only covered the land cultivated by SLDB but extended over the longhouses, burial grounds and communal farmlands. This time around, there was no consultation, compensation nor were there any measures taken to extinguish the villagers' rights in accordance with the Sarawak Land Code.

Ladon’s son, Ambun, like others from the other longhouses, discovered that the land had been sold to an entity called Sarawak Plantation Agriculture Development Sdn Bhd (SPAD).

New seedlings were planted by SPAD but the company did not reply to letters from the communities – not until they erected a blockade in November 2005.

“When we put up the blockade, we were arrested and put in the police lock-up. Eleven of us were detained for two weeks, some were even re-arrested,” recalled Ambun.

A suit was filed in March last year against SLDB, the Superintendent for Lands and Surveys for Mukah Division and the State Government.

Ambun was one of three community leaders from the Iban tribe who attended the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in Kuala Lumpur recently.

The Sungai Bawan Ibans’ experience appears to be the norm in Sarawak, as documented in the report Land is Life: Land Rights and Oil Palm Development in Sarawak launched at the RSPO meeting.

The report revealed more than 100 legal cases where indigenous people are suing the government and companies for violations of their customary land rights. Over one-third of these cases involve oil palm development.

One of the four authors, Sarawak researcher Wong Meng Chuo, said the abuses committed by oil palm development by both state and private entities contradicted the standards developed under the RSPO initiative.

The report concluded that if Sarawak palm oil is not to be excluded from international markets, major changes in laws, policies and practices are required.

Communities in Kalimantan, Indonesia, are facing similar problems of land grabbing. Indonesian legislation classifies the ancestral domain as state-owned forests and the state retains control over the land.

Asmara Syahputra, 23, told a press conference organised by Sawit Watch that a RSPO member started planting on his communal land in 1996. When the community of Dayak Banuaq in Kutai Barat, Kalimantan sought to regain their land, they were intimidated, arrested and subjected to inhuman treatment.

Similar testimonies were made by four other indigenous representatives from other parts of Kalimantan and Sumatra.

Nurbaya Zulhakim of Jambi said RSPO should learn from the experiences of timber certification schemes that failed to address land tenure disputes.

Sawit Watch has, until mid-2007, registered 500 cases of communities facing encroachment upon their lands by oil palm companies.

Leading 10 other local NGOs and one foreign group, Sawit Watch had submitted a request last August, to a United Nations agency charged with eliminating racial discrimination, seeking its intervention in the eroded rights of indigenous people in Kalimantan.

The request was submitted in relation to plans to establish oil palm plantation along 850km of the Indonesia-Malaysia border as part of the Kalimantan Border Oil Palm Mega Project. This area is part of the traditional territories of Kalimantan’s Dayak community.

Being very much self-regulatory in nature, the RSPO is regarded as just the first step. RSPO president Jan-Kees Vis acknowledged that it was impossible to resolve all outstanding conflicts as “we don’t have all the answers”.

However, the 198-member grouping has listed “engaging the governments” as a challenge to move forward. - The Star Online

Sarawak NCR landowners protest company let-down

Tony Thien | Dec 5, 08 10:48am

Owners of native customary rights (NCR) land, representing more than 220 people from two Iban longhouses in Ulu Niah, Miri, protested in front of the Kuching High Court yesterday.

Holding up placards, the group of about 100 expressed anger over the failure of a plantation company to honour its promises to them.

They had signed a joint venture in 1997 with KTS Group subsidiary Niamas Istimewa Sdn Bhd and Sarawak Land Development Board, a statutory body and a shareholder of Sarawak Plantations Bhd, to develop 2,508 hectares of NCR land for oil palm.

Under the Konsep Baru land development scheme, the landowners would hold 30 percent of the equity, the government agency 10 percent and a private investor 60 percent.

Spokesperson Changgai anak Dali said Niamas Istimewa Sdn Bhd had made an initial payment of 10 percent of the agreed sum.

However, he said it has not paid a single cent of the 30 percent by way of unit trust shares to the landowners over the last nine years, even though the harvested oil palm has brought returns to the joint-venture (JV) company.

The landowners have also learned that 10 percent of the equity of the JV company has since been sold to the private investor without their knowledge.

Changgai, 57, told Malaysiakini that the group had asked Deputy Chief Minister Alfred Jabu and State Land Development Minister James Masing to intercede for them, but that there has been no result.

Complaint of encroachment

The landowners, who had travelled from Miri by bus, took the opportunity to mount the protest while in Kuching to lend support to Changgai who is facing a legal suit filed by another company.

Plantation company BLD Resources Sdn Bhd had applied for an injunction to prevent him from entering land under a provisional lease (PL), which it had obtained by the state government.

In 2005, the Land and Survey Department had issued the company a PL known as Lot 91 Sawai Land District, covering1,803 hectares, for oil palm cultivation.

Changgai is alleged to have trespassed on about 80 hectares within the area by planting it with food crops and oil palm.

The case was heard in chambers yesterday before Judicial Commissioner Abdul Hamid Sultan Abu Backer, who allowed an adjournment.

This was on application by the plaintiff’s counsel George Lo on the ground that the suit should include the Sarawak government which issued the PL.

Changgai is represented by Miri-based Orang Ulu NCR lawyer Harrison Ngau (photo-left).

Other residents of Changgai’s longhouse will file a separate suit against the company for encroaching on what they claim to be NCR land within the PL area.

It was agreed to consolidate all the cases for hearing on Jan 13 next year.

Iban prayer ritual, human skulls at court premises

by : Sulok Tawie

Tanah Kami Nyawa Kami Warisan Kami
Our Land Our Life Our Heritage

KUCHING: Native customary rights (NRC) landowners from an Iban longhouse in Bintulu Division came in full force for a case involving one of them and a plantation company at the High Court here yesterday.

However, it was the ritual aspect that attracted all the attention.

They arrived about 8am in two buses and cars, and began the miring (prayers for God's help and blessings) ritual in front of the court complex.

Rumah Ranggong longhouse elder Jimbon Gai with human skulls at the court premises
after the miring ritual in Kuching yesterday

After the prayers were chanted, a man placed the piring (offerings) on the mat, next to six human skulls collected during the headhunting days of the tribe.

The ritual, which lasted less than an hour, was conducted in a peaceful manner. A man, when asked about the ritual, said it was to strengthen their spirits.

"You know, land is our life and without it, we cannot live," he said.

The case involves BLD Resources Sdn Bhd, which seeks for a court injunction against Changgai Dali of Rumah Ranggong longhouse in Sungai Sah, Ulu Niah, Bintulu Division, from trespassing on a piece of land which it said was leased to it by the government.

Changgai maintained that he had customary rights over the land.

Judicial commissioner Dr Hamid Sultan Abu Backer adjourned the case to Jan 13 to allow BLD Resources to file an application to include the state government as a party. BLD Resources counsel George Lo made the application in chambers.

Harisson Ngau Laing, counsel for Changgai, said he would file a suit on behalf of Changgai and the other residents of the longhouse against the company for trespassing on their NCR land.

Ngau said the longhouse residents would also name the government as a party to the suit.