The looming 17th Sabah general election

Are the upcoming Sabah elections done and dusted already? That’s a loaded question but recent political developments suggest that Hajiji’s GRS is on a relentless roll, even as the Opposition remains in disarray.

The looming 17th Sabah general election are imminent and the exchanges and deliberations surrounding potential aspirants for the chief ministerial position have already commenced. Amidst the turbulence of the political sphere, one distinguished name that emerges as a potential to spearhead the government alliance is Hajiji Noor the incumbent Chief Minister of Sabah.

Hajiji Noor has enjoyed a prolonged stint in the political limelight and his notoriety and adeptness in leadership have been extensively acknowledged. Hajiji’s distinct leadership methodology deviates greatly from that of now opposition former chief minister Shafie Apdal or the Sabah Umno Chief Bung Moktar, and it is precisely this disparity that positions him as a robust contender for Sabah chief minister’s post.

In this piece, we will analyse the reasons why Hajiji might be the best bet for leading the Sabah government.

Hajiji never compromises on his Ideology.

Hajiji has always been a staunch believer in his ideology and principles, even while being in an alliance with the Perikatan National.  He has never hesitated to take a stand on crucial issues such as the rights of Sabah as enshrined in the Malaysia Agreement of 1963 and the 40% revenue entitlement from the Federal Government, even if it meant going against the stance of his alliance partner. Hajiji’s unwavering commitment to his principles has earned him respect from his supporters and critics alike and is a testament to his strong character and conviction.

Moreover, Hajiji’s focus on social justice and welfare measures is also noteworthy. He has been a vocal supporter of the hardcore poor and has implemented several policies to uplift them. He believes in affirmative action and reservations and is committed to closing the poverty gap that has long affected many Bumiputera in Sabah. He is determined to bring about changes in the lives of people who crave advocacy, especially those in remote areas. He is seen focused on economic growth and development. Hajiji’s focus on social justice and welfare measures is in line with the ideology of several political parties, and this could help him in rallying their support.

Not just once but twice, Hajiji has demonstrated that Warisan is not invincible in the realm of Sabah politics post 2018. In the year 2020, he formed a coalition with other parties to defeat the Warisan in the state elections. This was especially when Shafie Apdal’s popularity was at its peak.

Hajiji’s reputation as an honest and incorruptible politician is a breath of fresh air. He has kept Sabah on a pedestal of governance and maintained a balance between Sabah’s unique racial moderation and Umno’s ketuanan and Pas’s Islamisation during Muhyiddin and Ismail Sabri’s era when the Perikatan National (PN) was calling the shots in the center. This could help him in gaining the trust of the electorate, especially those who are increasingly disillusioned with the existing political system.

The Opposition parties need a formidable leader who can furnish a plausible alternative to GRS the ruling party. No opposition leader fits the bill. Hajiji’s adroitness in crafting coalitions and collaborating with sundry parties is an invaluable asset. His proficiency in working with an array of parties in Sabah, coupled with his amicable relations with various leaders of Opposition parties, renders him the quintessential candidate to spearhead the GRS alliance.

Furthermore, his antecedent tenure as a Political Secretary to the former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia Late Gafar Baba in the 90s has bestowed upon him exposure to national politics and a perspicacity into the mechanics of the Federal government.

Undoubtedly, this endeavour shall not be a facile undertaking, for Hajiji is besieged by multifarious perils. Foremost among these threats is the concerted attack by Warisan and Umno. Umno is currently grappling with numerous upheavals. There are 3 groups now within Sabah Umno, one of the group headed by Rahman Dahlan is not in favour of teaming up with Warisan. Rahman Dahlan’s group  has checkmated Bung Moktar who is most eager to team up with Warisan in the next Sabah election to take on the Gabungan Rakyat Sabah state government. And also several pivotal Sabah Umno leaders have defected to Hajiji’s group. It would be an intriguing spectacle to witness how Bung Moktar and the Sabah Umno navigate this political storm.

Again in the year 2022, Hajiji repeated this feat by triumphing over the Warisan-Umno strategy of attempting a Sheraton-style coup to topple the GRS government. Instead, Hajiji forged an alliance with his former opponent the Pakatan Harapan (PH). Umno was kicked out from the ruling side. This is a testament to Hajiji’s political acumen and his ability to navigate the complex landscape of Sabah politics.

Why Hajiji?

Hajiji’s leadership style is vastly different from Shafie’s. Shafie is seen as a assertive leader who is not afraid to take bold decisions but reckless. However, Hajiji’s leadership style is more subdued and methodical. He is seen as a consensus-builder who takes all stakeholders into consideration before taking a decision. This style of leadership is more inclusive and has helped Hajiji in maintaining a stable government in Sabah since 2020

Sabah upcoming assembly election: Will Sabah PH emerge a kingmaker or just play spoilsport?

In the upcoming Sabah polls probably in a year’s time, it looks as though the GRS and BN-Umno and Warisan will be engaged in a direct battle, with incumbent GRS leader Chief Minister Hajiji seeking a second term. While the Sabah PH not poised to secure power independently, could play a crucial role if the GRS – BN- Warisan contest ends in a tie. However, some believe the Sabah PH might disrupt the electoral landscape for the three primary parties in numerous constituencies. In the 2020 state polls, the Sabah PH secured only nine seats (DAP-6, PKR-2,UPKO-1) out of 73, but in the 2022 Dewan Rakyat elections, it won only five seats (DAP-2, PKR-1, UPKO-2) and a 14.7% vote share.

The Sabah PH’s vote share in the 2020 state polls was 15%, but in the 2022 Dewan Rakyat polls, it cornered a smaller 14.7% vote share.

In a year or so, Sabah will go to polls where GRS and the BN and Warisan are locked in a direct contest as incumbent GRS head and Chief Minister Hajiji hopes to form his government the second time. The Sabah PH is resurgent in Sabah but too far from hoping to come to power on its own. Yet, it can emerge a kingmaker in case of the GRS-BN-Warisan contest ending in a draw. But many think the Sabah PH would just play spoilsport for the three main parties in dozens of seats.

Except for UPKO and Dap which has strong roots in Sabah, the PH’s Sabah leadership is perceived as relatively weak. The party’s resurgence in Sabah from a bit player is largely due to the focus of the party’s big guns including Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on the state where the party big-wigs from Dap, Amanah and PKR have been regularly visiting in the past few years.

But the Sabah PH changing its state leader to Christina Liew just before the elections is being seen as negative by many. Christina Liew lacks grassroots support and even division leaders within Sabah PKR at one time have called for Christina Liew to be removed as Sabah PKR chairman.

The Warisan has claimed that the PH has gone slow on probe against the GRS leaders, since both the parties have struck a deal after the failed political coup by Shafie Apdal and Bung Moktar. The central agencies not seen arresting and charging any politicians in Sabah the last one year has strengthened this impression. Many see the Sabah PH only trying to divide the opposition and anti-incumbency votes in favour of the BN-UMNO and for the benefit of Zahid Hamidi the Umno President.


Why is the Sabah PH hopeful?

The PHs impressive show in the recent state elections after it won Penang, Selangor and Negri Sembilan and nearly 40% vote share was seen as the party gaining a foothold in other states. After the party’s good show, many began to see it as a credible opponent to the PN, especially due to state Bersatu chief Ronald Kiandee’s strident opposition to the ruling party the GRS.

PMX’s sway over the voters, especially the youth, is another factor that gives hope to the Sabah PH. PMX will be the poster boy for Sabah PH. And the talk is also, the party is in alliance with former Foreign Minister Anifah Aman’ and his brother the former CM Musa Aman who still has some appeal in the state.

What is the Sabah PH’s gameplan?

In the 2020 elections, the Warisan-PH plus had lost the state. Warisan had cut ties with Sabah PH and had gone solo for the Dewan Rakyat elections two years later. Now, the Sabah PH is focusing its energy on nearly 25 seats where it thinks it has significant pull among voters. It hopes to win from nearly 20 seats where it will not be in direct contest with the GRS or the BN-Umno or Warisan due to the seat-sharing formula, while on the remaining seats it will divide the votes against the dominant candidates.

In the 73-seat assembly, the Sabah PH’s hope is to corner more than 15 seats and become a king maker in case none of the main opponents, the GRS and BN-Umno and the Warisan gaining a large edge over the other. All depends on the Sabah PH’s ability to translate its vote share, into seats.

Now the question is: is the PH willing to lose Sabah by trying to claim the state as its own by fielding candidates in a maximum number of seats, thus letting Warisan benefit from the split votes?

Hajiji is unquestionably a soldier against fanaticism and extremism

Hajiji Noor is, after all, an honourable man.

Just consider exactly how honourable the Sabah Chief Minister is. He is a man of backbone, a man of steel, a man of unbendable principles. He stands against corruption firmly. It only took him two or so years to discover that his former boss, Muhyiddin Yassin’s Bersatu, was burdened down by corruption allegations, and then he acted with all the swiftness of an outraged lion. Nobody could have expected him to do any different, after all. It is not as if such allegations could have been predicted in 2020, Hajiji is far-sighted, but not clairvoyant.

And so he has, rightly, abandoned Muhyiddin and the Bersatu and set up camp instead with Anwar Ibrahim’s Pakatan Harapan in 2022. Only a man of firm and unshakeable values would do such a thing – abandoning an ally of long standing to join up with a stranger on the basis of morality alone. Some have alleged that Hajiji and Anwar Ibrahim have in fact been allies before – but since recorded history, there is no definitive proof for this claim. Even if Hajiji has made a habit since 2018 of moving back and forth between formations, from BN-Umno to PH-Bersatu to PN-Bersatu to Gagasan Rakyat-GRS – well, what of it? Sometimes, unshakable standards require you to be communal, sometimes regionalistic, sometimes honest, sometimes nationalistic. Is that not exactly what unshakable standards mean?

And even so, it is to be recalled that Hajiji is unquestionably a soldier against fanaticism and extremism. If it so happened that the PH was multiracialism prior to the induction of Anwar Ibrahim as prime ministerial candidate, why would not Hajiji – ally with it? And of course, it is now clear that Anwar’s PH puts multiracialism first. This is far more obvious in 2024 than in, say, 2020 during Dr Mahathir. The past two years – free as they have been – show that Anwar Ibrahim and Hajiji share a single-minded focus on development and jobs and the economy. Last year the Sabah state revenue collected was a whopping RM6.3 billion.

The wisdom of the many who have claimed in the past that Hajiji is a political colossus who acts on the basis of ideology and ethics alone is now being borne out. Why, a Malaysian historian recently suggested that Hajiji should lead Sabah for another term. It is clear that the Sabah needs someone who knows never to compromise with Sabah state rights. And never to compromise either with corruption or communalism at its head.

Of course, it is pure coincidence that Hajiji’s GRS and the PH together have a majority of one or two in the Sabah Assembly. And there are 5 more from Umno’s 17 bringing it to 44 assemblymen and more than enough to form a stable government. Such things as arithmetic can have no bearing on Hajiji’s decisions, only his conscience does. True, if the two parties were perhaps a few seats short of a majority, Hajiji’s conscience might have advised him differently – but we mere imperfect mortals cannot hope to fully comprehend the rigid codes that drive men like Hajiji.

So let us with all our hearts congratulate Hajiji for the full political grip on Sabah during the recent failed ‘Kinabalu plot’ by Shafie Apdal and Bung Moktar and Peter Anthony to unseat him as Chief Minister. Who would have thought that his following where his conscience led would lead to his staying as Chief Minister! It is true that he has said some things in the past about his new supremo, Anwar Ibrahim, that were a little pointed. But those unfortunate statements were unquestionably a product of being deceived by Muhyiddin, by Bersatu, and by the sharp social-media professionals foisted on him by deceptive Putrajaya types.

Let us also congratulate Anwar Ibrahim and his customary persuasion, through the force of his ideas, PH now is part of the government in Sabah, in a state that propagandists in the media will have told you not possible. This adds Sabah to Penang, Selangor and Negri Sembilan, and others where the PH’s apparent loss in “elections” was demonstrated to be an illusion brought on by pseudo-multiracialism – an illusion swiftly corrected once the people’s representatives met, conferred, and decided what they really cared about was wiping out the influence of money in politics, and therefore decided to join up with the PH, which they know is working hard to wipe out the influence of anybody else’s money in politics.

You can tell when men are chosen by destiny; for then, as with Hajiji and Anwar Ibrahim, unrelated circumstances appear to organise themselves to assist them. After all, who could have expected that most of the states where the PH wants are precisely the same states where MACC would choose to focus their investigations? In a country like Malaysia, in which the bad old institutional decay of the BN-Umno years are little more than a memory, such decisions are of course insulated from politics. And if such investigations happen to uniformly assist the great cause of raising the PH to power in every state capital in the land, that strange coincidence must be hailed for what it is: evidence of divine intervention.

In all this, you are no doubt looking for someone to blame. Well, searching too hard is foolish. After all, when in doubt, we know who is ultimately responsible for everything that goes wrong in Malaysia: the DAP (semua salah DAP). Simultaneously powerless and awesomely influential, it has a presence in Sabah, yet must be held responsible for the fracturing of an alliance between two Sabah politicians who detest each other. After all, when John and Paul quarrelled over the Beatles, everyone knew it was Ringo at fault, not Yoko.

With Hajiji and Shafie and Bung on its side, why the PH sits pretty in Sabah

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim will have reason to be happy with Sabah’s political classroom. The Borneo state is perhaps the only state whose all State Assemblymen – both ruling and opposition – are part of the PMX’s Unity government.

This in a nutshell tells you the story of Sabah politics. The three principal parties – the Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS), Sabah Barisan Nastional (BN) and the Warisan – are bending backwards to be in the good books of the Pakatan Harapan (PH). In fact, Chief Minister Hajiji who usually keeps himself away from national politics, asked the opposition parties to do a rethink on their decision, saying Gabungan Rakyat Sabah  will never take part in any “langkah” (move) to topple the present federal government.

Therein lies a story. The decision to be seen on the side of the PH is not borne out of love for the Sabah PKR, Sabah DAP, Sabah Amanah and UPKO but by the desire of the Warisan and GRS and the BN to neutralise the other in the run-up to the state assembly elections on or before September 2025.

Technically, the Sabah Umno right now has an alliance with the Warisan. But that is only on paper because Sabah Umno’s dalliance with the Warisan is the worst-kept secret in Sabah.

Chastened by the humiliating defeat in 2020 and forced to eat humble pie, Shafie Apdal has been bending backwards to please the PH. At different public fora over the past one and a half years, Shafie has been laying it thick, hoping PMX would be suitably mollified. It has not fully happened. Shafie made a few bad moves, wanted to go solo in the 15th general election and fight PH to split votes and this was the second time that Shafie had snapped ties with the PH.  He had earlier blamed his alliance with the PH after his Warisan’s defeat in 2020, and during the ‘ Sheraton Move’ was seen sneaking into Muhyiddin’s house. But Shafie went back to PH after 2022 General Elections and supported Anwar Ibrahim as the 10th prime minister (PMX).

The flip side is that Shafie knows that the Warisan may find it hard to survive one more stint out of power. The Warisan in 2020 won 23 seats, but 11 of its assemblymen defected and for Parliament won only 3 of the 25 seats in 2022. It would need an enormous swing away from GRS to help Shafie slide into the driver’s seat in Sabah.

Sabah therefore is a peculiar state where the weakest political player is actually the strongest.