The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policy makers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

In 1916, Haji Abdul Karim Amrullah, an Islamic religious scholar (ulama) from Sumatra, made a sneering remark about the Mufti of Johor. “To become a Government Mufti in Malaya is a great glory,” he said. “You have an official uniform, with a whole banana-comb of epaulettes on the shoulder, a jubbah [Arabic-style garment] embroidered with gold thread, a silk turban, and your own car. The ra'ayat [people] fear and obey you, eat the scraps from your table, your spat of sireh [betel leaf]. And if you want to get married…Bismillah [anytime with God's consent].”

Muftis are religious scholars (ulama) whose role is to provide guidance to the Muslim community and issue fatwa (religious rulings). In Malaysia, Muftis are appointed by the Malay Rulers. Ideally, an alim (singular for ulama) must not blindly serve the interest of ruling elites; instead, they must be pious individuals who protect the interests of the religious community. Haji Abdul Karim's harsh words showed that he must have felt strongly that the Johor Mufti of his time had been falling far short of those ideals.

To be sure, Haji Abdul Karim and the then-Johor Mufti came from rival schools of thought. Haji Abdul Karim was a key player in the reformist/modernist movement in Sumatra, which called for Indonesian Muslims to return to the fundamentals of the Quran and the Hadith (sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad). The movement appealed for “pure” Islam in Indonesia, one that was erased of local beliefs coloured with mysticism and irrationalism. The reformists’ position on theology, rituals and cultural practices was in fact quite similar to that held by Salafi-Wahhabi scholars. Salafism is a Sunni orientation that can be traced back to the theologian Ibn

Taimiyyah (b.1263–d.1328). It urges Muslims to return to Islam's pristine past, and considers the first three generations after Prophet Muhammad's death as the ideal period for Islamic societies to copy. Salafis believe that ideas and scholarship generated by savants of these three generations should therefore be applied in contemporary social and political life. One of the main tenets of Salafism is its rejection of Islamic innovations. Its followers can however be either progressive or regressive in their religious outlook. For progressive Salafis, reliving the system of the first three generations after the Prophet means the upholding of its values and principles.

Ba’ Kelalan is one of the most competitive seats contested in the Sarawak state election. The last three state elections – in 2006, 2011, and now 2016 – have seen either Barisan Nasional (BN, National Front) or opposition candidates win the seat with only slight majorities (Table 1). This election was no different: Baru Bian, the incumbent candidate from the opposition Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR, People's Justice Party) faced a stiff challenge from his opponent from 2011, Willie Liau of the BN-component Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party (SPDP). How Baru retained his seat, despite the opposition's poor performance overall in rural Sarawak, offers insight into how voters balance potentially conflicting priorities and ties in defining their interests.

Ba’ Kelalan has 7,375 voters, 87.8 per cent of whom are Lun Bawang/Kelabit, followed by Chinese at 4.4 per cent, Malay/Melanau at 3.9 per cent, Iban at 2.6 per cent, and 1.3 per cent Others. As is the case in many rural areas in Sarawak, Ba’ Kelalan still lags behind urban areas in terms of development of infrastructure such as a secondary school, electricity, piped water supply, clinics, and so on. The lack of proper electricity and water supply has left many Lun Bawang to rely on gravity-fed water and solar energy.

Given the importance of development in Ba’ Kelalan, it is understandable that the BN once again resorted to the ‘politics of development’ (see Jitab and Ritchie, 1992; Weiss and Puyok, this volume), hoping to recapture Ba’ Kelalan from PKR's Baru Bian, who has held the seat since 2011. The BN's politics of development approach came with the announcement of millions of ringgit in allocations to fulfil Ba’ Kelalan's development needs (more on this below) and reminders to Lun Bawang voters that it is only through the ruling coalition that Ba’ Kelalan can be developed.

Despite the BN's well-oiled campaign machinery and promotion of the politics of development, the ruling party failed for the second time to wrest Ba’ Kelalan from the opposition. That loss means the BN failed to make a clean sweep across Sarawak's rural areas. This chapter is an attempt to understand the dynamics of electoral politics in Ba’ Kelalan by looking at salient issues affecting the Lun Bawang voters’ decisions. The chapter also explores the role of faith-based organisations, their networks, and their influence among Lun Bawang voters.

Stakan is one of eleven new constituencies1 created in a 2015 redelineation of Sarawak's legislative districts. It was carved out of Muara Tuang, which is under the Kota Samarahan parliamentary constituency and has always been a stronghold for the Barisan Nasional (BN, National Front). Of the eleven new state constituencies, Stakan was especially controversial due to its huge number of postal votes – votes cast under special circumstances, particularly by members of the armed forces and police. Postal voters in Stakan account for 47.8 per cent of registered voters in Stakan and represent 28.1 per cent of total postal voters in Sarawak.

As described below, it is generally presumed in Malaysia that postal votes will fall overwhelmingly to the BN. The demographics of Stakan thus entailed huge odds against the opposition. Nevertheless, the Democratic Action Party (DAP) took a gamble and fielded a candidate to deny the BN a walkover victory. As predicted, the BN won, gaining 8,820 votes (59.4 per cent of eligible voters), for a 7,042 majority over the DAP, which secured only 1,778 votes. Voter turnout was 73 per cent.

The election result in Stakan was most likely determined by postal votes, and the prevalence of these voters also shaped the campaign and its messages. This chapter attempts to determine the extent to which postal voters affected the electoral outcome in Stakan and, given the nature of the contest, whether the issues raised by the candidates in Stakan matched the issues of concern to local voters.

Background to the contest in Stakan

Stakan (see Map 1) has a total of 14,846 registered voters, comprised of 7,788 ordinary voters and 7,050 postal voters. A semi-rural seat, Stakan has an ethnic composition of 41.9 per cent Malay/Melanau, 21 per cent Iban, 18 per cent Chinese, 14.1 per cent Bidayuh, 1 per cent Orang Ulu and 3.1 per cent Others. (These ‘Others’ include Javanese who reside in a few villages in the area, such as Kampung Jawa Batu 12 and Kampung Sri Arjuna.)

The BN candidate, businessman Mohammad Ali Mahmud, was the two-term incumbent state assemblyman for Muara Tuang and is also the younger brother of former Sarawak chief minister Abdul Taib Mahmud. Ali's previous victories in Muara Tuang were said to owe more to his kinship to his brother than to his own credibility as a candidate.

The most recent, eleventh Sarawak State Election (SSE11) demonstrates yet again the domination of PBB (United Bumiputera Heritage Party), part of the Barisan Nasional (BN, National Front) coalition, in Malay-majority areas. Tupong is one such area. The election in Tupong saw a two-pronged contest between the incumbent government party, represented by Fazzrudin Abdul Rahman of PBB, and Nurhanim Hanna Mokhsen of the opposition Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR, People's Justice Party). The former won with 79.1 per cent of the popular vote against 20.9 per cent; 8,055 votes set the candidates apart. This chapter examines Tupong as one of BN's strongest urban bastions.

Tupong is notable because it defies the assumption that election outcomes in the urban areas lean more toward the opposition – unlike in other Sarawak urban seats such as Padungan (a Chinesemajority seat) and Batu Kawa (a mixed seat). A possible explanation is that Tupong houses among the highest concentration of voters from Sarawak's newly emergent, urban, Malay-Muslim middle class, who are among the prime beneficiaries of state and federal BN affirmative action. As a political community, the Malays also have a close historical and social affiliation with PBB, the state BN majority component party. The community's mix of feelings of gratitude and affinity with PBB translates into the mass of voters supporting BN in Tupong. In this chapter, I argue that Tupong is an example of the pull of patronage politics, based on a variant of the politics of development often associated with more rural areas in Sarawak, by looking at campaign strategies and issues raised by BN and PKR during the SSE11 campaign period.

First, I outline the basic demography of Tupong, which is a rapidly developing, privileged, Malay-majority, urban area. Second, I discuss ‘the Adenan Factor’, which is a strong feel-good sentiment towards Sarawak's newly elected chief minister, Adenan Satem. The extent to which Fazzrudin's victory depended on Adenan's popularity hints at the prevalence of personalised, clientelist politics in the area. Third, I discuss PKR's ceramah (political speeches or rallies). Like Fazzrudin, Nurhanim also relied on her party seniors for boosting support, suggesting the pervasiveness of personality politics, whether rooted in charisma or in patron–client ties. This reliance on personal ‘pull’ was evident when PKR lost much of its audience for ceramah sessions due to the absence of PKR (and other opposition) national superstars.