Sarawak political unpleasantry

Adenan Satem plays a clever and cunning political game.

Though he is virtually guaranteed a big win in the Sarawak state elections, he wants to crush the opposition completely, in preparation for the federal elections (GE-14) to support Najib's BN.

Thus his principal target is Chinese votes. And he is abetted in this by federal ministers - see my previous post Chinese beautiful once more?

First, he did a clever stunner by saying Sarawak will recognize the UEC certificate, a vernacular education qualification so much valued by the Chinese community and their educationists that they (the Chinese) would have rushed into their respective bathrooms on hearing of that "Adenan's good news" to do whatever people do when they're terribly excited and want to bring their excitement to a "boil", wakakaka.

Adenan even became a local Chinese hero by criticizing Putrajaya's stand against the UEC as 'stupid and senseless'.

But I sense he has been cunning because his promise may yet turn out to be an empty promise as Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) has given the two-fingers to that proposal, refusing to recognize the UEC as a recognized entry qualifications for any degree course in UNIMAS.

TMI (long gone but this news reported by Yahoo News) said (extract):

Datuk Fatimah Abdullah, the Sarawak minister holding a watching brief on education for the state cabinet, said she is puzzled and does not understand why the state’s public university Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) issued a position statement that it would not recognise the independent Chinese school's Unified Examination Certificate (UEC) as an entry qualification.

The state welfare, women and family development minister said what she understood from Chief Minister Tan Sri Adenan Satem's announcement that the state would recognise the UEC, was that holders could now use the certificate to apply for jobs in the state civil service and for entry into the two private universities which the state has a stake in – Curtin University in Miri and Swinburne University of Technology, Sarawak campus in Kuching.

She said nothing was said about using the certificate, which was not recognised by the ministry of education, to get into Unimas.

Unimas vice-chancellor Prof Datuk Dr Mohammad Kadim Suaidi on Friday issued a statement that the university could not accept UEC holders at the moment as it was “bound by regulations of the higher education ministry”.

Kadim had said Unimas, being a public university, is obliged to follow directives from the ministry regarding the national education policy towards UEC and also the current admission requirements to public universities.

And has Adenan said anything since the VC for UNIMAS said f**koff to the UEC?

However to be fair, we need to first ask whether Curtin University in Miri and Swinburne University of Technology, Sarawak campus in Kuching are governed in their admission requirements by what the UNIMAS VC had stated?

I hope not but alas, as I had posted in Bad-Blood Brothers that some of our higher education policies have been much influenced/governed by the 'Promote & Suppress' stratagem, an evil pincer strategy, so I would not be in the least surprised if my fears regarding the admissibility of the UEC for Curtin and Swinburne local campuses are realized. But let's hope my suspicions have been completely unfounded and I apologize in advance for my hope-for error and unwarranted suspicions.

Nonetheless I trust he will keep his promise to accept UEC holders as civil servants in the state government. Let's hope his promise is not a clever but cunningly cheap promise, one of no value at all.

Then he unashamedly bars opposition leaders from Peninsula from entering the state, abusing the apparatus of autonomy that Sarawak enjoys under the merger agreement but one for an entirely different reason.

And he knows he would get away with that draconian worse-than-Peh-Mor measure because, I am sad to say this, most Sarawakians would silently approve of his decision as they too dislike (or even hate) Peninsula Malaysians. Now, should I even be using the now-apparently useless term 'Malaysian' in this context?

Just a casual reminder especially to Sarawakians: many Peninsula Malaysian police and servicemen shed their blood and lost their lives defending Sarawak from the Indons during Confrontation and the communist menace during the Emergency years back. Don't forget their sacrifices.

Annoyingly Adenan also plays a nasty threatening game, warning Chinese Sarawakians that only BN Chinese politicians elected will be the (Chinese) voice in the state government.

While it's plain obvious that DAP and PKR Chinese (elected) ADUN won't be part of his cabinet, has there been a drastic necessity to make such a crude racially oriented threat? Besides, opposition ADUN are also legitimate 'voices' of the people, so Adenan might have gone too far in his unnecessary warning. I had hopes he wouldn't descend to such gutter levels in his political campaign.

We all know that DAP and PKR will definitely be the state opposition even if they don't compete in 3-corner fights in the 6 seats mentioned in my previous posts, but Adenan's warning smacks of a racially disagreeable unpleasantry, perhaps showing his true colour.