Content is king, but distribution is god.
Websites would collapse without the popular means of distribution, such as Google or social media networks. The number of people who visit a content website on their own, by just typing in the URL, is a small minority. You are probably reading this article through one such distribution mechanism. The most critical leg of the newspaper industry is the distributor.
This saying about media — distribution is god — applies to all communication, including political communication. Much of the debate on Sabah politics is about content: Hajiji Noor says this, Dr Jeffrey Kitingan goofed up on that, Shafie Apdal is contradicting himself, Bung Moktar should adopt this strategy, Peter Anthony is taking this position, and so on. But perhaps we have been over-emphasising who-says-what and who-did-what. The bigger problem today is the delivery pipes of political communication.
Critics like yours truly have been calling out Sabah’s opposition parties for not doing their job well. But when you speak to the opposition leaders, they argue, ‘We say and do a lot of things but the media doesn’t show them’. One Warisan leader told me, “We are talking on a certain plane and the voter is on a different one. It is two different conversations.” It is not so much a disconnect as a dissonance.
Controlling the distribution networks
Chief Minister Hajiji’s control over the communication pipelines tells you why public opinion doesn’t turn against him no matter what. Nothing affects him or his image.
It also partly explains why in the past Shafie and Bung Moktar got away with lies and frequent contradictions. Bung Moktar even now goes around saying Sabah’s bad road conditions are because of Hajiji and the GRS, blaming them for months, and then do a complete turnaround after a backlash when it was shown that he was the Works Minister from 2020 to 2023. He can get away with it because the voter can’t see anyone call him out on this contradiction. Those doing so are limited to an echo chamber of their own, a very small one.
So is Shafie playing up on the 40% revenue return from the federal government when he did nothing when he was Chief Minister. Its Hajiji who is insisting that it’s time for the Federal Government to uphold the Constitution and facilitate the 40% return of federal revenue to Sabah.
Building your own ecosystem
The means of distribution of political content in Sabah have to be seen in their diversity: TV news, newspapers, websites and social media platforms, semi-private messenger services like WhatsApp, party workers, non-party workers like NGOs’ and paid volunteers, government events and advertising.
The way Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) handles all these means of distribution explains a lot about Chief Minister Hajiji’s success. It explains why Hajiji has a Teflon coating. Nothing sticks to him because the mud the opposition throws at him doesn’t get seen by the voter. A farmer in Sapong near Tenom once told me, “I want to know what the opposition has to say but the media doesn’t show it.”
The opposition has learnt to use TikTok but that’s about it. The distribution networks don’t exist. They can blame the media and go to sleep or they can start building their own distribution networks from scratch. Better late than never. Donald Stephens ( later Tun Fuad Stephens) didn’t just give up because the press was owned, controlled and dominated by Kuala Lumpur. He started his own newspaper The Sabah Times in 1953, editing and publishing them.
If you look at the 26 months of the Warisan-led Warisan Plus government, did they do anything to create their own sustainable networks of distribution of content? They had a website than a paper. But how will it reach the people? Now, some say, they even have to resort to bringing in illegal immigrants (PTI) to participate in demonstrations like the recent #KamiMahuAir demonstrations at Menara Kinabalu, organised by student groups, but nine undocumented people were detained by the police.
What’s stopping the opposition?
GRS itself has a large number of workers. Why didn’t parties like the Umno and Warisan use their years in power to build a more robust cadre? Why can’t they do it now? Through campaigns and by giving cadre-building tasks to ticket seekers, a large cadre can be built. That’s how Hajiji built the GRS from scratch and won the chief minister’s post.
It is not enough to add more people to your party; they have to be constantly given tasks, and motivation to accomplish those tasks. They have to be told to go door to door on a campaign or to add all their neighbours on a WhatsApp group, but never add those non-citizens – the type who go around shouting “Sabah Kita Punya”.
Building the party organisation is a very tough and demanding thing to do, but technology can help Sabah’s opposition parties reach out to the voters without the (valuable) human interface. The opposition can argue that TV news has all been co-opted by the Hajiji ecosystem. But, the GRS isn’t preventing the opposition from building and maintaining a few thousand WhatsApp groups of its own, as long as they don’t bring non-citizens into the struggle of the people of Sabah.
The key here is scale. The GRS likely has many more WhatsApp groups under its influence than the entire opposition put together. When you meet an opposition politician, ask them how many WhatsApp groups do they have under their influence and in which areas. If they don’t have the answer on their fingertips, they are not serious about politics.
It doesn’t matter what Shafie or Bung says, because voters don’t get to know their ideas anyway.
Selvarajasomiah's Weblog 
The battle between the Sabah government parties and the PTI-led Opposition parties, for media space, reminds us of America’s search for the next President come 3 November 2024.
(PTI or pendatang tanpa izin i.e. illegal immigrants).
Self-proclaimed leading Independent candidate in US 2024 Dr Shiva Ayyadurai has cautioned, in taking the cue from his campaign for getting on the ballot, that the future was offline as Big Tech was systematically putting many people in “digital cages” while at the same time, allowing “limited hangout” on the Narratives put out by people like him. Both digital cage and limited hangout deny generating too many hits for people like Dr Shiva. He has been circumventing the hurdles by getting signature collectors for getting on the ballots and, at the same time, producing bumper stickers for the growing number of supporters.
He favours Town Hall meetings and facing the independent media online for worldwide audience on the Mantra on Truth, Freedom, and Health.
Dr Shiva hopes that he can gather 50K activists worldwide, as leaders, for bottom up people’s and/or workers’ movement for democracy.
The top down control freaks that make up the establishment, alleged Dr Shiva, unleashed the pandemic worldwide in 2019 for crushing the bottom up movement.
The top down control freaks, Dr Shiva’s Narrative goes, don’t work but just move the money around in their obsession with power, profit and control.
In Sabah, we can take the cue from the pandemic and Big Tech, and adopt the “unity is duty” approach for bringing back local government elections which was suspended in 1965 and subsequently abolished.
Sabah’s claim for reimbursement of 40 per cent of the revenue collected by the Federal government in the territory and local government election go hand in hand.
https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2024/06/10/shafie-enough-negotiations-time-to-disburse-40-revenue
All development, it can be said, is local except where it’s statewide or national. Hence, taxes should be levied locally, and portion given the state government. The state government, in turn, can share with the Federal government.
https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2024/06/1062172/new-rm72-billion-solar-glass-plant-sabah-expected-create-5000-jobs
The revenue-sharing formula, as the 40 per cent issue shows, remains the most important Agenda in Sabah. Any other arrangement risks internal colonisation viz. the criminal accumulation of capital by transfer of wealth from those who have no power for the benefit of those with power.
Sabah has suffered enormous drain of its wealth since Malaysia Day on 16 September 1963 as the unresolved 40 per cent issue shows.
Then, there are the oil and gas revenue, resources and reserves in Sabah (as in Sarawak) monopolised by Petronas since 1976 under the Petroleum Development Act and the infamous Oil Agreement.
Finally, and not the least, the Federal government has allegedly been non-compliant on the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA’63).
MA’63 was the basis for the stillborn and/or aborted Equal Partnership of North Borneo (now Greater Sabah), Sarawak and Malaya (with Singapore merged) in Malaysia.
There are continuing talks, insiders say, between the Hajiji government and the Federal government, on the 40 per cent claim and MA’63.
More progress may be made this time, under the Hajiji government, compared with the previous pro-PTI backdoor government led by the Warisan Party.
The Warisan period, from 11 May 2018 until 26 September 2020, was marked by weekly fires at squatter settlements mostly occupied by PTI. It may have been bid for getting Malaysian personal documents by claiming, without proof, that they were lost in the fire.
The 2013 RCI (Royal Commission of Inquiry), initiated by Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, concluded that the Projek IC Mahathir probably existed. The Projek, it has been alleged, placed many PTI in the electoral documents. The unlawful voters, born outside Sabah, were allegedly blue MyKad (citizen) by syndidate working with rogue elements at the National Registration Dept (NRD). These MyKad, purportedly for automatic citizens, were based on fraudulent local late registration birth cert and fraudulent SD (Statutory Document). Automatic citizenship, under the National Registration Act 1959/1963, means descent from citizen. Under the Act, the unlawful voters do not exist. Once PTI, PTI forever. The EC (Election Commission), duty bound, should remove PTI from the electoral rolls.
MA’63, for those unfamiliar, remains constitutional document on Malaysia. It must be read together with similar documents which make up the unwritten/uncodified Malaysia Constitution incorporating the Federal Constitution as well.
MA’63, after nearly 60 years, was inserted recently in the Federal Constitution.
The jury may still be out on whether the insertion in the Federal Constitution will some day create “legal complications”. The can can no longer be kicked down the road after Malaysia being in the former British Borneo territories for more than half century.
It was Attorney General Tommy Thomas, who cautioned de facto Law Minister V. K. Liew in 2019/2020, that inserting MA’63 in the Federal Constitution may create “legal complications”.
Liew’s successor, Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, three caution before the winds and inserted MA’63 in the Federal Constitution. Wan Junaidi was recently sworn in as Sarawak Governor.
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