Before the Limbang parliamentary seat was created in 2008, Limbang was the name of a state seat held by James Wong during post-independence Sarawak until the 1990s.
Wong was one of Sarawak’s earliest businessmen to enter the timber industry and his firm, aptly named Limbang Trading Company, was a household name in the timber trade at one time.
Wong was also SNAP president for many years.
Upon his retirement from politics following SNAP’s court tussle with the Registrar of Societies, Wong’s children never received the same respect and reverence as their father from Limbang folk.
Today, no other personality or family in Limbang is able to garner or match the same fame or popularity as James Wong.
Even Limbang’s incumbent MP Hasbi Habibollah is an unknown entity outside of politics although he has been the MP of this northern Sarawak constituency since 2008.
Like the Sibuti seat, which was also contested for the first time in 2008, Limbang was conveniently “hijacked” by PBB.
The party staked a claim to the seat because of its 45% Malay electorate.
Like Sibuti, too, the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP), an offshoot of SNAP, was too weak to make its unhappiness known within the Sarawak BN in 2008.
It is clear that the James Wong legacy carries little or no weight now in Limbang.
But PBB’s Hasbi did not have it easy in his electoral debut in 2008.
He faced a strong challenge from PKR’s Dr Lau Liak Koi, winning only by a majority of 676 votes.
Lau is a popular private medical practitioner in Limbang town. He still operates his clinic there but has retired from politics.
However, in GE13, with the increase in the number of voters, Hasbi defeated Sarawak PKR chairman Baru Bian with a thumping majority of 8,301 votes.
This caught many by surprise as Baru is also the state assemblyman of Ba’kelalan, a state seat in the Limbang parliamentary constituency.
The PKR man is certainly no pushover and the result was difficult for Baru and his party to swallow.
Baru obtained only 4,698 votes while his BN opponent garnered 12,999 votes.
So how did Baru and PKR lose by a mile in 2013?
Besides the huge increase of more than 4,000 voters from 2008, the voter turnout of 73.45% in 2013 was also a factor. It was surprisingly high for a constituency with such difficult terrain.
Before GE13, Hasbi stated that he was not rattled by Baru’s reputation as the champion of native customary rights (NCR) land issues.
Baru was expected to make some inroads into the hearts of voters, especially the natives.
However, many also felt that Hasbi has been hard-working. In a previous interview with the media, he had touched on NCR issues.
“We do not need to wait for elections. We can solve it now,” he said then.
The constituents must have trusted Hasbi’s words for they presented him with a thumping victory.
Will GE14 see Hasbi and Baru take on each other again? Will it be Round Two for the PBB engineer and the PKR lawyer?
Many in Limbang think so.