COMMENT If politics is the realm of the possible, its spell woven by a practitioner like Abdul Rahman Ya'kub who died in Kuching on Friday at the age of 87, is octopus-seeming: you can see the mutiple tentacles move but because of the maze that creates, it's difficult to trace the play to source.
 
Till today there is as equal weight to the theory that the Ming Court affair of February 1986, a rebellion against the government of Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud engineered by Rahman, was triggered by a clash of interests between nephew Taib and uncle Rahman, as there is to the counter narrative that the entire imbroglio was a devious scheme orchestrated by a dissembling duo, to entice and then eviscerate latent opposition to one family's dynastic aspirations.
 
If you tally the points in support of the contending theories, the result would be a tie. Like a hung poll, a recount would have to be ordered.
 
Now that one principal of the drama has passed on without venting anything revelatory on the episode, resolution of this question would have to await honest disclosure of the other living protagonist in the most significant event in post-merger Sarawak's history.
 
The historical record is unlikely to enjoy any such assist.
 
Thus intriguing questions on the most important episode in Sarawak's modern history will remain tantalisingly unresolved, though that will not stop the mills from churning with speculation.
 
It is the thesis of Domination and Contestation: Muslim Bumiputera Politics in Sarawak, a little known book by Faisal Hazis, published in 2011, that the reason the small Melanau community in Sarawak – only three percent of the population and counting among its number the scheming uncle and his wily nephew - has been able to dominate the state's politics from 1970 onwards is because of an ability to work its purposes behind a beguiling maze.
 
Faisal is a member of the Malay community in Sarawak that's resentful of Melanau domination of Sarawak politics, as exemplified in the 11-year tenure (1970-81) of Rahman Ya'kub as chief minister, and the succeeding 33-year occupation of the post by Taib Mahmud (right) (1981-2014).
 
That domination was achieved with the acquiescence of Umno, the main political power on the Peninsula who only required the putative masters in Kuching to deliver the parliamentary seats in the largest state in the country to the BN overseer in Kuala Lumpur. No questions would be asked about the methods employed.
 
Umno priorities understood

As early as 1969, Rahman understood Umno's priorities with respect to Sarawak and learned to weave his designs within the contours of that frame.
 
While serving a brief stint as federal education minister, he impressed Abdul Razak Hussein, effectively the country's de facto prime minister in the wake of the May 13 riots, by pushing at a faster pace than was wise, the change in the medium of instruction from English to Bahasa Malaysia in the national education system.
 
The deleterious effects of the haste are felt to this day in the dismal state of English comprehension among of the country's present-day graduates.  
 
Rahman's ingratiation with Razak (left) got him the chief minister's post after the polls in Sarawak in 1970 when he united the Malay-Melanau and Dayak parties under Parti Pesaka Bumiptera Bersatu PBB), outflanking rivals for power in the multi-racial though Dayak-dominant Sarawak National Party (Snap) and enticing the Chinese-based Sarawak United Peoples Party (SUPP) away from opposition into expedient collaboration with him.
 
This astute maneuvering was followed up by his success in 1973 at persuading Bong Kee Chok, secretary general of the Clandestine Communist Organisation (CCO) of Sarawak, to surrender, thus dealing a major blow to the small but disruptive band of militant communists in the state's interior.
 
Rahman's biggest coup, though, was in persuading Razak to order in November 1974 the detention of James Wong Kim Min, deputy president of Snap and parliamentary opposition leader (Snap won nine parliamentary seats in the August 1974 general election), under the draconian Internal Security Act.
 
The detention on the dubious grounds of Wong's alleged collaboration with Brunei over the kingdom's coveting the adjoining territory of Limbang was another instance of the abuse of the ISA by the powers that be to weaken democratic opposition in Malaysia.
 
With Wong in detention in Kamunting over a period of 18 months, the stage was set for unrivaled domination of Sarawak politics by PBB and the particular mastery of that terrain by one family.
 
When Razak died in January 1976, Rahman found his successor as PM, Hussein Onn, less amenable to his ingratiation; his take on what was afoot in Sarawak did not garner the reception it had before.      
 
Reports of disgruntlement with Rahman's policies as CM were relayed by PBB's state coalition partner, SUPP, to Hussein through Stephen Yong Kuet Sze, a party stalwart who enjoyed federal cabinet ranking.

This reached the stage where Rahman was compelled to withdraw from the CM's post in early 1981. He was elevated to the governor's position while his nephew, Taib, supplanted him as CM.
 
Perhaps Rahman consented to relinquishing the CM's post from a belief that the younger Taib would be pliant to the uncle's promptings but, it appeared, the nephew had other ideas.
 
Spiraling discord

Soon the grapevine in the state began to hum with word of spiraling discord between governor and CM. By early 1986, these murmurings reached a crescendo.
 
Several disaffected elected representatives from PBB were joined by their counterparts from another BN component Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS), all of whom gathered at the Ming Court Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, the focal assembly point for the rebellion.
 
They planned to move a motion of no-confidence against Taib but the maneuver failed to garner majority backing when Taib, playing the luring game with the state's timber resources at call, managed to prevent the gathering at Ming Court from attaining a numerical edge.
 
Taib held that edge until snap polls were held in Sarawak a year later. The upshot; the Taib-led BN won 28 seats to beat the combined opposition of PBDS (15 seats) and Permas, Rahman's vehicle, which won only six seats.
 
Defeat was made more bitter for Rahman when he was lost in the Melanau seat of Matu Daro by Wahab Dollah of PBB.
 
Taib, who had then PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad's (right) backing, had succeeded in calling his uncle's bluff.
 
The fallout from the Ming Court Affair took a long time to dissipate. When it did in the mid-1990s, the biggest losers were the Dayaks, the majority ethnic group in Sarawak's melange, who had backed the PBDS and paid the price through exclusion from the spoils of victory that Taib reserved for his minions among them who stuck with him.
 
Defeat did not land Rahman in destitution. That was why speculation arose and revolved in succeeding decades around the theory that the Ming Court Affair was an elaborate machination, devised by uncle and nephew, to entice probable opposition to a dynastic play for power to reveal itself and be drawn and quartered.
 
This is an intriguing theory with much going for it as against it.
 
Suffice, an episode like this, with contrary theories about its motivation, can only occur in a country which, not for nothing, goes by the satirical sobriquet 'Bolehland'.


TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.