COMMENT Why is Adenan Satem blotting his increasingly compelling copybook by banning peninsula social and political activists from the state?

Adenan is far and away the most progressive chief minister in the country and a candidate to be prime minister, based on the merits of a track record he has compiled since becoming head honcho of the biggest state in the country 18 months ago.

The bans on ‘undesirables’ sit uneasily with an Adenan administration that hews to a liberalism broadly espoused by most of the activists the immigration authorities of Sarawak have sought to bar from the state.

This is what is so jarring about the entry bans.

They do not comport with the liberalising thrust of an administration that, in its recent manifestations, had allowed a Bersih demonstration to take place in Kuching and granted recognition to a Chinese language educational qualification that enables holders to apply for jobs in the public sector.

True, Sarawak (and Sabah) are allowed autonomy in respect of immigration but the manner of its exercise - whereby social and political activists from the peninsula deemed by the state’s authorities as ‘undesirables’ are disallowed entry - damages public confidence that that power is being employed reasonably.

When Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak ( photo ) spoke before a Kuching crowd last month about Putrajaya’s desire to see more power devolved to Sarawak, his remarks were received with what was seen as polite condescension.

Sarawakians think the PM misses the point: they want the autonomy granted them by the 1963 Malaysia Agreement adhered to; not devolution.

Devolution is a grant whereas autonomy is their right as spelt out in the Malaysia Agreement.

Sarawakians see Putrajaya as having misconceived the spirit of the Malaysia Agreement and so any talk of devolution smacks of neo-colonialism.

If this is the way Sarawakians feel, they do not help their cause of a proper understanding of the concept of autonomy as outlined in the Malaysia Agreement by exercising it, in respect of immigration, by banning so-called ‘undesirables’ from the peninsula.

The latest casualty of the banning orders is DAP MP for Petaling Jaya Utara Tony Pua ( centre in photo ), who was allowed in at the airport in Miri but, later in the day, he was hauled away by immigration officers and sent back to Kuala Lumpur.

Pua joins a distressingly long list of social and political activists from the peninsula who were denied entry into Sarawak (and Sabah) by state immigration on grounds that they are ‘undesirables elements’, that catch-all phrase that’s a carryover from the immediate post-May 13 era when it saw much service by central government authorities.

Drawing the short end of the bargain

Sarawakians and Sabahans don’t tire of telling their counterparts from the peninsula that they have drawn the short end of the bargain that brought the two territories into Malaysia in 1963.

It’s difficult to rebut their case of having been hard done by in the 52 years since their merger with Malaya.

Putrajaya is seen to have taken a disproportionate share of both territories’ mineral wealth without commensurate returns in the form of development for the territories.

The upshot: a more rapid rate of economic development on the peninsula in comparison to that for the two territories.

In the main, the fault for this disparity lies with Putrajaya’s treatment of Sarawak and Sabah as the 12th and 13th states of Malaysia when, according to the terms of the 1963 Malaysia Agreement, both are separate territories - nations, if you like - in a composite whole.

The current national political scenario in which an increasingly unpopular prime minister is dependent on support from Sarawak and Sabah to shore up his legitimacy is a reflection of the imbalance that mars the relationship between the two territories with the peninsula.

Whether he understands it as devolution or as autonomy, Najib is turning out to the most benign of Malaysian PMs to the notion that Sarawakians and Sabahans must enjoy more say in the own governance.

That is the reason why elected legislators in both territories back him as PM: he is willing to give them what they want as rightly theirs.

Merger of the two territories with Malaya was supposed to have brought an equivalence in their respective economic situations. Instead, what it has wrought is asymmetry, not equivalence.

Within this convoluted situation, Sarawakians, in particular, ought to see what many there and in Sabah cannot visualise.

That is Najib decides to tough it out until the next general election, its results could issue in a political stalemate on the peninsula.

Umno would have lost seats but continued disarray within the opposition would throw up the possibility that if Sarawakian and Sabahan MPs unite behind a choice of one of them as PM, the opposition may back that choice in return for inclusion in a government of national unity.

Who would best be that choice as PM?

It’s not hard to envisage it would be Adenan Satem, provided he stands in his former parliamentary ward of Batang Sadong.

The politics of inclusion he had adopted thus far in his 18-months as chief minister has propelled him as prime ministerial material.

Why should he then spoil his commendable copybook by allowing the state immigration authorities to ban activists who are wont to support his policies if these weren’t devalued by egregious entry bans and expulsions?

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.