The Dayaks, comprised of 8 groups form almost half of the total voters in the coming Sarawak Elections on April 16, 2011. Which contesting party will they give their votes mostly to? Flung far and wide over 124,450 sq. km of Sarawak lands, some are even in Johore and Malacca now, they're difficult to reach. Back in 1987, there was said to be the issue of Dayakism, thought to be feelings of Dayak nationalism. Then, 24 years ago or 24 years earlier than that in 1963, it was thought to be at odds with Malaysian nationalism. In 1987, Leo Moggie, then head of the PBDS, a splinter of the preceding Dayak party, SNAP, told the Dayaks and everyone else, no single ethnic group could govern Sarawak and he went on to join the Kumpulan Maju which then lost the 1987 State Elections to the BN, helmed by the present CM Taib Mahmud.
PBDS and Leo Moggie were right and politics in Sarawak then forgot about Dayak nationalism and thereafter it was just about a lot of other "isms". The trouble was perhaps the foreboding prospect of being anti-Malaysia. For having lost all of the mineral wealth that Sarawak has many citizens would explode at the very thought.
But was it wrong for the Dayaks then or now to have feelings of honor and pride in their ethnicity or even race? Or for any one else for that matter. And when misconception was confronted by confusion why did it stop dead at that? Well, in Malaysia, up till even now, thinking is dangerous. In the case of the ISA Law, Raja Petra famously quoted Mahathir Mohammad as having said, Malaysians should be arrested before committing any act prohibited by the draconian piece of legal clamping. You will be arrested if you just have the thought. It's a law to prevent you from thinking. Had USA have ISA, there won't have been a 911. So said Mahathir!
We are not saying that the Dayaks would all go amok. They're civilised people. We're saying about the articulation of ideas and feelings in the culture of thinking which can only be nurtured in an reasonable wholesone environment, one where there is non encumbrance of thought for justice and freedom, a tribute to human intellect and noble aspirations.
Well, the ruling BN government will offer everyone their party's manifesto that will sing to high heaven and will be symbolized by their "dacing" or scale. And for the Dayaks, what will it be? Will it just be the symbol of the dacing of the BN? The reality so far is far from the truth. Will they, or any other Sarawakian see only symbols of "1Malaysia", symbols of the dacing and whatever else and none of the real thing?
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