Who will rescue Sarawak?

Who will rescue Sarawak?

Al Tugauw | Mar 17, 08 4:30pm, Malaysiakini.

Why is Sarawak still 30 years behind Malaya? When Sarawak, Sabah and Singapore joined Malaya to form Malaysia in 1963, it is unfortunate that Sarawak's leaders then did not have the foresight to reserve the state's oil and gas resources for the state itself.

Perhaps this was also a good thing, otherwise Sarawak's oil and gas resources could also have been plundered by its own leaders, like its timber and land resources now, without any real benefit to the bulk of the ordinary people of the state.

Today, Malaya has the Petronas Twin Towers, the North-South Highway and many other highways, Putrajaya, Cyberjaya, the F1 Circuit and many, many other multi-billion ringgit projects and their spin-offs which put its far ahead in terms of development compared to Sarawak. The bulk of these projects would not have been possible if not for the contributions from the oil and gas resources of Sarawak (and also Sabah for that matter).

In any event, much of the so-called development in Sarawak has not really benefitted the vast majority of its rural people except marginally. What happened to the so-called ‘Politics of Development’ propounded by the leader who does not want to give up his position, Taib Mahmud, the erstwhile chief minister of Sarawak?

Unfortunately for the people, they have been fooled by only a semblance of development. True development continues to elude the bulk of the state’s population.

Surely Sarawak with its vast oil and gas, timber and land resources could have done a lot better in terms of development over the last 30-plus years? Yet the sad fact is that as far as the rural areas of the state are concerned, those 30 years have been a period of lost opportunities for the people and of vicious exploitation by a few huge family, family-related and crony companies.

Have these people really given back anything much to the people in return, other than some crumbs and even that grudgingly? The rural people in the mean time do not know any better and continue to support a corrupt, inept, exploitative and divisive government whose programmes do nothing more than regard them as trespassers or squatters on their own land and trap the people in a vicious cycle of poverty.

The whole political, legislative, administrative and economic process in the State has been hijacked by all means, mainly foul, to maintain this corrupt regime in power at the total expense of the people, who are fed lies and all kinds of misinformation in the name of governance and government.

The federal government in the meantime, the chief beneficiary of the state's oil and gas wealth, keeps quiet, a dreadful silence that will condemn the downtrodden and excluded rural people of Sarawak to another 30 years of lost opportunities, unfair practices, injustice, exploitation, corruption, waste, mismanagement and inefficiency.

Perhaps it is time for the people of the state to follow the lead of the rakyat of Malaya and take their destiny in their own hands and change the government of the state in the next state elections due in or before 2011. It is time for Taib Mahmud's head to roll.