NOVEMBER 13 — Deception breeds success.
Aptly describes Sabah’s candidates. Which dictates the outcome, since only candidates win and then govern.
The drumbeats in the Land Below The Wind set the tone federally. It is the most volatile electoral zone and — for the worst and best reasons — heralds national events.
In a roundabout way, pay attention to Sabah. It tells the future, and the future is hazy as hell with the lies that abound from Kota Kinabalu to Lahad Datu.
The party which leads a nation
PKR announced its 10 candidates for the state election on November 29. It also informed thereafter that candidates signed a RM10 million bond, in case they, well, bolt.
Who knows why they bolt or run away. Perhaps, to greener pastures. The better deal. To escape human bondage. A promise befitting their style. A lasting peace in their hearts. A unique vision for Sabah possesses them and they are unable to reconcile their destiny with their current party. Or there is a secret game among Sabah politicians to see who can join the maximum number of parties before they depart for the great beyond.
Maybe even, financial inducements. Oh, damn us cynics!
Who knows how to prove anything anymore in Malaysia these days?
In case they do that, scamper off for whatever reasons, the party demands its pound of flesh.
The party, that is PKR, has been diligently demanding meat like a vendor at a cannibal weekend mart since 2018.
Not our place to remind PKR Secretary-General Fuziah Salleh that the party is still pursuing RM10 million from former party vice-president Zuraida Kamaruddin without a conclusion.
The high court agreed in 2023 she pays the bond for her 2020 exit. The appeals court in 2024 felt RM10 million was excessive for a contractual breach and lessened the amount to RM100,000, which is a 99 per cent discount.
Five years have passed since Zuraida’s intransigence, and she’s only paid her legal fees. Through her electoral victory, for 21 months she was local government minister. Plenty of time.
During Ismail Sabri Yaakob’s 14 months as prime minister, unknown characters amassed RM170 million and laid them inside his properties. Without his knowledge and participation.
Imagine if he was actively pursuing gains! In his defence, he eagerly waived his claims on the money. To his relief, not the rakyat’s, the attorney general’s chambers has not made up its mind on whether to prosecute him.
Summary, difficult to activate the bond with a lighter fine more plausible, while the potential gratifications when in office are myriad and mind-blowing.
Management consultants will advise the following, lie to be a candidate, lie harder to win, and stay lying since over time everyone forgets.
That is the not so bad part of the analysis of candidates. Looking at PKR’s choices, commitment to candidates with integrity even during warm-up got rocket-blasted off to Uranus.
Characters rife to run or lead the insurrection from inside.
Jamawi Jaafar for Melalap, George Hiew for Karamunting, Yamani Hafez Musa for Sindumin.
Let’s acquaint ourselves with the gentlemen.
Tenom’s calm balm
Jamawi, started in Umno. He’d be 18, when Umno reared its — pretty — head in Sabah in 1992.
He rose through those Chief Minister Musa Aman years, and chief named him in 2018 to contest Kemabong in Tenom, his base. He duly won.
Unfortunately, his boss Musa Aman did not manage to form the state government.
Fortunately, he was able to leave Umno along with his seat to support the new government of Warisan under Shafie Apdal.
Unfortunately, he felt underserved in Warisan, and supported the 2020 political coup by his former boss.
Musa Aman surged from near paralysis in hospital to line up enough ADUNs to ask Warisan to step aside for his return.
Jamawi, meanwhile, seamlessly returned to Umno to contest at the October 2020 state elections, but in Tenom’s other state seat of Melalap.
He lost to Peter Anthony who was later disqualified and now sits in Kajang Prison for corruption, not dissimilar to his current jail mate Najib Razak. But back to misfiring Jamawi.
Given great insight, like by a magic 8-ball, in 2022 after Umno slips at the general election, and Perikatan Nasional Sabah leadership en masse rejected Muhyiddin Yassin, Jamawi decides to throw his chips in with the latest iteration to rule Sabah.
From direct member of the new Gabungan Rakyat Sabah, to naturally a leader of Parti Gagasan Rakyat Sabah under chief minister Hajiji Noor.
As three years is too long for his inconsolable soul, he chucks away his Gagasan badges and takes his followers to PKR, under Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.
He, my friend, is the newly refitted, the epitome of consistency, reliability and loyalty, to be PKR’s candidate for Melalap, and hopefully the party’s assemblyman for the next five stable years.
PKR did not bat an eyelid lifting a regional warlord under Gagasan’s watch. Gagasan leads Pakatan’s election ally GRS.
Hajiji will at this election campaign ask his party faithful to vote for their latest defector on November 29, voting day.
That a Netflix political farcical comedy has not been made about our power rationalisations is a diabolical mistreatment of Malaysian ingenuity in defining political loyalty.
Georgie’s Hee-haw
This brings us to George Hiew. Phew.
George Hiew Vun Zin hails from Sandakan and unsurprisingly kicked off his public service career at DAP.
As a 34-year-old, presumably with fire in his belly, he fought unsuccessfully for Sandakan’s Elopura seat, against Gerakan’s Au Kam Wah in 2013.
Being one of the few active politicians with the distinction to have lost to a Gerakan candidate, he left DAP in 2016 and joined the Warisan revolution.
His prize was victory at adjacent Karamunting in 2018, and an assistant minister post in the Warisan administration.
He stayed the course with Warisan in 2020, and defended his seat at the state election. But shortly after, when GRS-Gagasan steadied post GE15, he departed from Warisan for those in power.
He argues, not being in power is destabilising for Karamunting. If only Malaysian politicians were allowed to teach political stability in universities worldwide.
He became Gagasan’s local hero up till a bunch of days ago. It appears stability is at stake again, and to avoid destabilisation, he has left the Gagasan train for the sturdier PKR train. All in the name of stability. Stability now, stability forever.
Now he is the PKR candidate for Karamunting. His household staff are now sifting through his wardrobe and souvenirs to not let DAP, Warisan or Gagasan stuff be seen by local voters. Presently, he is loading up PKR insignias for himself and his supporters.
So, Karamunting, your able and harder than meranti — used by Roman boats — PKR candidate, George Hiew.
Musa Aman has sons equally distributed
If the previous two give you cause for pause, that maybe they are a bit shifty and not what PKR can advertise as party pillars who are never ever going to sell PKR down the river for a better deal elsewhere, the third one is a banger.
Yamani Hafez Musa is the Yang Di-Pertua Negeri Sabah Musa Aman’s son. Spending his twenties and thirties as the chief minister’s son, winning his first election go, for the Sipitang parliamentary seat would have meant he’d gone off to Putrajaya to be a 41-year-old Umno minister from Sabah.
The rise of Pakatan with the sails of Warisan undid their family’s joy at home and Putrajaya. Dad was not chief minister any more, and he was just an MP from a drowning Umno.
He joined Bersatu in 2019 as a go-with-the-flow move. He chose not to contest the Sipitang seat in 2022.
Rumours swirled this year about him joining PKR to contest the Sindumin state seat in Sipitang. The two-time incumbent, Yusof Yacob, faces corruption charges related to the Sabah mining fiasco.
Now, 48, he is in his third party. Dad the man — Musa Aman — decides how proceedings get underway for the chief minister swearing-in on November 29, there is no doubt that any of the parties which win enough seats but no outright majority will dangle offers, assuming Yamani is a PKR assemblyman by then, to the YDP’s son the deputy chief minister role.
And if Yamani fails, brother Hazem Mubarak Musa is GRS-Gagasan candidate for Sungai Manila. Hedging their bets, the family.
Trust us, we know what we are doing, we always do
So, there, PKR brings in three beacons of solidity and reassurance in the form of Jamawi, Hiew and Yamani.
Truth dies quickly in Sabah elections, and character is a non-starter.
The insane contradiction at a time the Malaysian government is incensed that social media platforms are not hunting down untruths and its school teachers will deliver as a subject character to our young ones around the country next year, is that we honestly are on the cusp of not knowing what contradictions are anymore. Whether in Sabah or anywhere else in the federation.
A friend showed me a race between a camel and a dwarf quartet over 400 metres.
It was far less crazy than the spectacle unfolding in Sabah, as PKR leads the charge to bring stability anew by parading the most reliable, loyal and doggedly principled candidates in living history.
All these as politicians from all Sabah parties of all types of trickeries screaming at the top of their lungs that they are Sabah-first candidates.
Their body language, and persistent need to jump from party to party, cause to cause, whispers me-first candidates. More than what a train to Tenom can carry.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
