Universiti Malaya’s Awang Azman Pawi said GPS, being the state government of the day, had resources and mechanisms at its disposal to disperse aid and assistance to the people, thus boosting its ability to win voters over.
This puts the Sarawak opposition – which already lacks the number of supporters, members and divisions that GPS commands – at a disadvantage.
“Although the delay in holding the state election gives the opposition more time to get its act together, the magnitude of its reach will not be as great as that of GPS in terms of its ability to spend on the rakyat,” Awang Azman told FMT.
He said some voters had lost confidence in Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) ability to be the opposition, especially following its fall from power last year.
“This influences the perception of Sarawak voters towards the opposition, which is seen to be disunited and fragile,” he said.
Oh Ei Sun, a fellow with the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, said there was little doubt at this point that GPS, especially PBB, would emerge victorious at the state polls.
While also expecting the coalition to utilise its “enormous resources” to roll out more “voter-pleasing gimmicks”, he told FMT he was predicting GPS to win with a slimmer majority than it garnered in 2016.
“The question is really only how much inroads the opposition can make to dent GPS’ winning majority. The opposition could use this extra time to sort out its seat allocation,” he said.
Oh said seat negotiations were still the biggest challenge in the way for the fragmented opposition, adding that this was important to avoid splitting votes among the parties in the opposition.
“There is scarcely anything else that they can do to pull in rural votes, even with the extra time, as they simply cannot marshal the same level of resources as GPS to win over rural voters,” he said.
The Sarawak assembly’s tenure expires in June, but elections cannot be held until after Aug 1 following the declaration of emergency by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong.
Chief minister Abang Johari Openg recently said the state election was not the ruling government’s priority as it wanted to focus its efforts on curbing the spread of Covid-19.
With elections not allowed until the end of the emergency, the state is working on completing its Covid-19 immunisation programme by August.
Earlier speculation was that the state election would be held by August, but both Awang Azman and Oh are expecting it to be pushed back to later in the year.
Oh said it seemed increasingly difficult to hold the polls by August in view of the rising Covid-19 cases in the state, and noted that delaying the election further would require a renewal of the emergency in Sarawak at least.