Party Politics in Sarawak

Dominance of Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu

Abstract

This paper elucidates how Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB) has maintained a strong grip on political power since the 1970s in Sarawak, Malaysia, focusing on its historical achievement of a dominant position in the state legislature. PBB’s dominance owes much to the overwhelming breadth of its support base. PBB was formed as a result of a merger between Parti Bumiputera (PB), a merger between two Muslim Bumiputera-based parties–– Barisan Ra’ ayat Jati Sarawak (BARJASA) and Parti Negara Sarawak (PANAS)― and Iban-based Parti Pesaka anak Sarawak (PESAKA). Thus, PBB gained a significant advantage of obtaining support from Muslim and non-Muslim Bumiputera. PBB’s dominance is underpinned by the relative weakness of the other parties. In the early 1970s, Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) lost support from rural Ibans as it became too oriented to its urban Chinese constituents; however, it also faced the rise of the peninsular-based Democratic Action Party (DAP), leaving it with a narrow and vulnerable support base. On the contrary, Dayak-based parties have repeatedly split due to intra-party power struggles, as seen in the formation of Parti Bangsa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS), resulting from the split of the Sarawak National Party (SNAP) in the mid-1980s and the formation of the Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party (SPDP) and Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS), following on the later split of SNAP and PBDS in the early 2000s. The most recent state election, held in December 2021, clearly reflects the aforementioned inter-party power dynamics. PBB continued to demonstrate its unparalleled strength as a hybrid Bumiputera-based party, in part by obtaining support from non-Muslim as well as Muslim Bumiputera. In contrast, in some constituencies, Chinese- and Dayak- based parties were exposed to close contests with opposition parties. From the above, one may wonder why non-Muslim Bumiputera-based parties split, whereas Muslim Bumiputera-based parties were able to consolidate and expand their party structures. The foremost reason is that non-Muslim Bumiputera live along the rivers and form diverse communities in their basins, making it difficult to form a single-ethnicity party to gain their votes. This is why non-Muslim Bumiputera-based parties have tended to see their internal order disrupted by party members from different ethnic groups, leading to fissures.