The end of Ketuanan Melanau is in your hand

The Pesta Gawai is just around the corner. For the natives of Sarawak, it is a time when they celebrate and enjoy the harvest, sharing the moment of thanksgiving with their families and friends from local and those returning home from peninsular and overseas. It’s a very meaningful celebrations served with various type of traditional and modern delicacies and drinks such as tuak.

But this fiesta only last for a while and after that its back to the reality of life. Behind the fiesta, which lasted for a few days in a year, many natives don’t realize the effects brought by modernization that have drowned their rights in the stream due to complexity of politics. Many still fanatically believe in the manifesto brought by the faces of smart liars who promise unity, development and prosperity. Realize it or not, massive deforestation that shifted the habitat of Penan, exploitation and surrendering of various NCRs to federal government such as Bakun project and life without clean water, electricity, health, telecommunications and transportation system are some of the despairs and unhidden truths that have haunted the native groups of Sarawak. Realize it or not, the natives have been ruled under the shadow of Ketuanan Melanau. Been the largest group in Sarawak population at 43% compare to Malay, Melanau and Chinese, the dayaks are been confined to playing the supporting roles to the other races over the states politics and socio-economics.

The native BN leaders so far, have been mute and deaf over most of their people’s claims, a sign that there have been so comfortable and spell bounded under the leadership of BN. Taib’s leadership in PBB has not been challenged since 1981 and now PBB is run like his own palace while Jabu and native’s members are the puppeteers. The disunity among Dayak dominated parties such as SNAP and PBDS over the years, have creates various fractions of Dayak supporters and reformed Dayak parties. The current scenario shows that those who stay with Taib, remain politically strong due to BN's popularity and electoral dirty tricks while those who decided to leave seem to lose their popularity, and politically losing their stripes.

With the just concluded General Election as baseline, many see the Dayak reformed parties as weak and will give no impact to BN unless better strategies are drawn to prepare them to face the coming state election. With Barisan Rakyat spreading their wings to Sabah and Sarawak, many Dayak’s candidates had run in the previous election under the flagship of PKR. As for the native parties, the best thing by right is for the reformed parties to join Barisan Rakyat. At least as an alliance of Barisan Rakyat, they still maintain their identity as the natives while riding on the alliance’s tsunami experience to campaign against BN.

And for those of you, who will go back to your longhouses and villages for the Gawai Fiesta, spread the message of change to your families. Stop voting for the conmen who have betrayed your ethnic rights to other people. Never fall to the slavery of lustful rewards again should they ask voters to do so. Remember, when the voting stops for BN, the legacy of ketuanan Melanau and its cronies will come to an end in the next state election.