Malaysiakini
Joe Fernandez
Jun 6, 10
1:18pm
COMMENT There seems to be some new method at work in Jeffrey Gapari Kitingan’s “madness” judging from the unexpected presence of Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar in Kota Kinabalu for the weekend. It was close to midnight on Thursday when invitations for a Tadau Ka’amatan (Harvest Festival) dinner function, the next day in her honour, went out.
Putatan PKR Division Chief, Awang Ahmad Shah, who made all the dinner arrangements, could not shed any light on the hurried function. All that the longtime Jeffrey ally and political scientist could say was that he was merely “carrying out instructions”. 
Officially, the word is that Nurul (right) was on a brief holiday in Sabah with her husband and two kids and visiting friends. Jeffrey’s off-the-cuff speech during the dinner and that of Nurul and several other Pakatan Rakyat leaders told a different story: that politics, as the first German Chancellor Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck remarked on Aug 11, 1867, is all about “the art of the possible”.
The Sabah strongman had evidently invited the Puteri Reformasi (Reformation Princess), in a moment of eureka, to be the new face of the Pakatan Youth in Sabah and Sarawak. Her mission, should she so choose, is to help woo the votes of the young, and perhaps the not so young, to the opposition alliance. This includes an estimated 280,000 unregistered eligible young voters – in Sabah alone – and women. This is a sizeable chunk of the vote bank in East Malaysia.
The youth factor can be expected to put a dent in Barisan Nasional’s perennial boast that Sabah, along with neighbouring Sarawak, are electoral fixed deposits of the ruling coalition. Jeffrey sees BN’s bragging as a form of calculated insult to the people of the two states.
East Malaysians not stupid
The boast implies that Malaysians on the other side of the South China Sea are an unthinking lot who will slavishly lap up anything that the ruling coalition throws at them. 
Jeffrey’s idea is to reverse the Umno propaganda and use the votes of the youth to make BN candidates in East Malaysia lose their fixed deposits at the next general election. This is certainly a tall order for even Jeffrey (right), a seasoned and energetic politician and thinker, who once sent the shivers up the spine of Machiavellian former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad. He was then a Sabah think tank head. The next big showdown is expected to be anytime between now and 2013.
The forthcoming Sarawak state election will be a trial run of sorts for the ‘BN Lose Deposit’ project. This will be an even taller order if the Sarawak polls are delayed and the general election brought forward and both held simultaneously.
However, Jeffrey may have reckoned correctly that aging and ailing Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud won’t be able to match the ‘Nurul factor’ among the youths in the state. For starters, he (Taib) will not have any ammunition against her. She has an unsullied reputation so far and with the youth, and energy, beauty, intelligence, time and a young family on her side.
Taib would have preferred that the youths be left out of the political equation, and aging politicians and has-been former BN members now in Pakatan to take centre stage in the electoral stakes. This is the kind who led the recent spate of defections from PKR. Taib is on home ground here.
How the older generation of politicians take Jeffrey’s unilateral moves remain to be seen. They can’t certainly object to the latest, albeit youthful twist, in the local political theatre. His new emphasis on the young is a reminder that politics is all about the future of the children, grandchildren and the generations unborn.
Knowing when to go
What will perplex the ever hopeful senior crowd around Jeffrey even more is that he seems to be signaling for the very first time that his days in active politics are numbered. He has finally seen the writing on the wall and has wisely worked out his exit strategy.
If that is the case, Jeffrey has indeed risen to the occasion and stolen a subtle march on the other Kitingan in politics, Joseph Pairin (left), his elder brother. Pairin, like Taib and MIC President Samy Vellu, finds it extremely difficult to let go and acknowledge that “enough is enough”.
Pairin, after a quarter century as PBS (Parti Bersatu Sabah) leader, shows little signs that he’s willing to give way to the young. Pairin would dearly love to have Jeffrey back in the PBS fold but that’s about as far as his brotherly love goes. He’s reluctant to let his younger brother, and party co-founder, take over as president at least for a term. Jeffrey thinks that this is his right although there may be those in PBS like Maximus Jonity Ongkili, his nephew, who will beg to differ. Maximus doesn’t accept that he has a “credibility problem”.
It is not entirely clear what is the entire game plan on the “BN Lose Deposit” project. It appears that Nurul’s mission will start with pockets of young intellectuals and professionals in Sabah and Sarawak. She can be expected to interact with them to be opinion leaders among the youth, galvanizing and energizing them to be agents of change. Winning over their elders to the agenda reformasi (reformation agenda) will be one priority of the youth.
Overcoming political inertia
The reality on the ground is that the older generation suffers from inertia, seemingly content with the legislators that they have long known, and seeing a vote against them as a form of betrayal. If these receive some monetary hand-outs from the powers-that-be in the run-up to voting day, they see it as incumbent upon them to maintain the status quo. They excuse this kind of politics as “hutang budi” (returning a favour). 
The tribal mindset of the older generation eschews too much political thinking and prefers to meekly follow the directives of their elders and chiefs on matters like exercising their ‘X’ power on polling day. The common refrain is that “the government (BN) is our father and mother and to go against it will be seen as a form of derhaka (treason)”.
The subsidy regime completes the vicious cycle by inducing a dependency syndrome among the electorate and fuelling the BN’s politics of corruption and moral depravation.
This is where the Internet-savvy, text-messaging and social networking young enter to make a difference in re-aligning the politics of Sabah and Sarawak to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
The strength of the youth is their ability to reach across and brush aside the politics of what divides us and focus on what brings us together as a people and a nation.
Jeffrey has long tried and failed with the elder generation in the rural heartland of Sabah and Sarawak. He now sees the need to change directions and use the young to get through to the old. The message is that they must not stand in the way of a better future for their children, grandchildren and the generations yet to come.
