By: Remy Majangkim (Majangkim Office)
KOTA KINABALU: The ink on the mainstream political post-mortems of Sabah’s recent election is barely dry, and already the elite narrative has retreated into its comfortable, clinical delusions.
Flip through the pages of legacy dailies like the Daily Express, and you will find analysts confidently diagnosing a “dwindling of Chinese support” for Warisan, chalking it up to voter fatigue, ambivalence, or a sudden, desperate pivot to basic “bread-and-butter” municipal issues.
How patronizing. How fundamentally detached from the ground.
What the establishment comfortably mislabels as “fatigue” is actually deep-seated, uncompromising disgust.
To suggest that Sabahans are trading their hunger for systemic reform for a mere promise of running water completely flips the equation.
We look at our dry taps, our blown fuses, our dark nights, and our potholed roads, and we do not just see bad management—we see the physical receipts of decades of endemic, unmonitored corruption.
The ordinary citizen isn’t ignoring bread-and-butter issues; they have finally realized that their livelihood is being starved directly to feed the arrogance and greed of an elite class that grows richer by the day.
The Anatomy of an Awakening
Let us set the record straight on the historic shifts since 2020. The mainstream media wants to paint the consolidation of the urban Chinese vote as a transactional asset that was somehow “lost.”
They forget that Warisan achieved what many backroom strategists deemed impossible: completely uniting the urban Chinese electorate to systematically dismantle a legacy, federal dependency like the DAP.
That was not a passive retreat; it was a deliberate, surgical strike by an electorate that refused to let its collective mandate be used to grease the wheels of a compromised federal status quo.
The establishment fails to understand that this community remembers what genuine partnership looks like.
Under the administration of Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal, the state shattered decades of tokenism by placing Chinese leaders into high-profile, heavyweight ministerial portfolios—giving real executive teeth to figures who fought for the economy, health, and welfare of the people.
This respect was mutual, organic, and deeply felt on the ground. To this day, Shafie can walk into hyper-dense, politically astute urban hubs like Foh Sang or Kepayan, and ordinary people will spontaneously stand up to welcome him.
That isn’t the manufactured reception of a bused-in political rally; it is the enduring reverence for a leader who treated the community as true stakeholders in the Bornean destiny.
It was a golden standard of governance that proved Sabahans could lead from the front, not from the sidelines as secondary thoughts to a West Malaysian agenda.
Therefore, recent voting patterns were not a sign of retreat, but a stand by voters of profound conscience who refuse to be bought off by eleventh-hour infrastructure crumbs while the systemic exploitation of their homeland continues unabated.
Look no further than the ongoing fallout of the Sabah mining licence scandal or the absolute circus surrounding our constitutional rights.
Putrajaya pat themselves on the back for boosting the interim special grant to RM1.5 billion, yet they continue to drag their feet, appeal court judgments, and delay the execution of the actual, binding 40% net revenue entitlement under Article 112C.
They offer us temporary allowances while withholding our birthright.
The systemic decay from this federal neglect trickles down to our most vital services. Just look at our crumbling healthcare system, where the Ministry of Health openly forecasts a staggering 50% no-show rate for medical officers offered permanent positions in Sabah.
Peninsular doctors are rejecting their postings in droves because federal planning has left Sabahan hospitals chronically underfunded and starved of basic logistical support.
When a whistleblower drops video after video implicating high-ranking local politicians in backroom resource exploitation—allegedly carving up 70,000 hectares of Bornean soil for political influence—the illusion completely shatters.
The public did not “lose their deposit” in the last election; they issued a roaring, unified referendum against this institutional betrayal.
The Kaamatan Handshake and GE16
The elite thought they could isolate this awakening, but the tectonic plates of Sabahan politics are shifting toward a grander trajectory for GE16.
The latest brewing understanding between Jeffrey Kitingan’s STAR and Parti KDM—visibly signaled when its new president, Priscella Peter, stepped forward to carry the torch of regional alignment—proves that this movement is expanding.
What we are witnessing is the foundation of the “Kaamatan Handshake.” For decades, the West Malaysian playbook relied on a simple strategy: divide and conquer.
Keep the urban voter alienated from the rural native, and the state’s wealth remains easily extractable.
The Kaamatan Handshake disrupts that entire theater. When the native KDM heartlands, carried forward by a new generation under Priscella’s historic leadership, and the unified urban Chinese electorate begin to recognize a singular, shared truth—that they suffer under the exact same system of elite greed—an unbreakable localist front is born.
However, this fortress must watch its own walls. When the local ruling elite begin weaponizing state autonomy laws—such as utilizing the Sabah Warning Notice (NAS) to bar independent civil society and election monitoring leaders at the airport—it becomes clear they aren’t protecting Sabah from federal overreach.
They are protecting themselves from accountability. The Kaamatan Handshake is a defensive shield for the people, built to resist both the federal grip and local collusion.
The Johor Contrast: A Snapshot of Peninsular Decay
To understand exactly why Sabah must fortify its borders against federal political culture, one only needs to look across the South China Sea to the circus of the Johor State Election.
While Sabahans are quietly building local, cross-communal understandings to protect their dignity, Johor is a masterclass in the moral decay of Peninsular politics.
The so-called “Unity Government” has devolved into open cannibalism. Barisan Nasional (BN) has arrogantly forced early polls to go completely solo, discarding its federal partners to claw back absolute dominance.
The entire landscape is a fractured, unstable mess of legacy factions, splinter movements, and desperate moral blackmail, with politicians tearing each other apart purely for the survival of the elite.
Johor is a warning sign of Malaysia’s national trajectory—deeply transactional, highly volatile, and entirely devoid of genuine governance.
It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that West Malaysian coalitions are far too busy fighting for the throne to ever care about the dry taps of a Sabahan household.
Reclaiming the Fortress
Let the Peninsular parties tear themselves to pieces in Johor. Let the elite comfort themselves with clinical columns about “voter ambivalence” in Kota Kinabalu.
The ground is moving, and the awakening is broad. Sabahans are no longer willing to play the role of a quiet colony, waiting patiently for long-term development timelines while our resources are carved up in executive backrooms.
Through the unity forged in our urban centers and the local alliances brewing in our heartlands, the message for GE16 is clear:
We see the corruption. We see the greed. And the fortress we are building will no longer be broken by your arrogance.
