Many loners actually proxies of parties

Kuching: Many independent candidates contesting in the Sarawak polls are actually proxies of political parties involved in turf war.By right, independents have no chance of winning in constituencies where the land area is vast and population is sparse, unless they are financially strong and has good logistical support.

But in reality, past election results showed that there had been a higher percentage of independents winning in Sarawak than in other states.

This was the result of Barisan Nasional (BN) component parties not happy with seat allocation fielding "independents" covertly to reclaim seats they believed were rightly theirs.

So it was not uncommon for BN candidates to lose to political minnows contesting as independent candidates due to sabotage.

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Kota Kinabalu: The Sabah Government continued its momentum in managing the economy in line with the commitment and spirit of the Sabah Maju Jaya (SMJ) when it posted record high state revenue of RM6.973 billion last year.

On the surface, the announcements by both Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak and Chief Minister Tan Sri Adenan Satem that BN would not accept those who stood against it into its fold implied that the coalition has shut its door on independent candidates but, read between the lines, it was a warning to BN component parties to stop the hanky-panky and that no one would gain from such acts, Oriental Daily News reported.

BN had not rejected independents who won in the past.

In the initial decades following the formation of Malaysia, and in the absence of opposition threat, fielding of proxies had become a "mechanism" to resolve seat disputes between BN component parties.

A good example was the 1979 state election when Sarawak United People's Party (SUPP) and Sarawak National Party (SNAP) — which had just been readmitted into BN — had overlapping claims on seats during negotiations.

Both parties refused to budge, resulting in them fielding independent candidates. Although BN won handsomely, three of the disputed seats were won by independents, who wasted no time to rejoin their parties.

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The scenario was repeated in 1983 when four independents won in the proxy war between SNAP and its off-shoot Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS). The four were quickly admitted to BN.

The tough stand taken by both Najib, in the wake of the 1MDB controversy, and Adenan, who is leading the state BN into the polls for the first time, is understandable given that the polls results will have a significant bearing on their image.

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