The early political history of the Igan state seat is interesting indeed.
The first post-independence Sarawak holder of the seat was Ling Beng Siong of the Sarawak Chinese Association (SCA).
SCA was roped in by Tunku Abdul Rahman as a representative of the Chinese community in Sarawak to partake in the formation of Malaysia because the Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) was opposed to the idea.
Ling was eventually made the youth and culture minister in 1967 under the Tawi Sli administration.
Ling held on to the Igan seat even after he joined SUPP following the dissolution of SCA in 1974.
Ling retired from politics in 1978 and Igan has been in SUPP’s hands until today – technically, that is.
Then came the infamous 1987 “Ming Court Revolt” against then chief minister Abdul Taib Mahmud.
David Tiong, a Sibu lawyer, who was the Igan incumbent at that time joined in the revolt.
In that state election that year, Tiong defeated SUPP’s first-timer Wong Soon Koh in Igan by a mere 22-vote margin.
When the revolt failed, Tiong’s political fortunes also waned and Wong took over in Igan in the 1991 state election.
Wong emerged as a senior player in Sarawak politics soon after and today he is still a state minister representing the original Igan seat (now renamed Bawan Asan).
It was Wong’s turn to turn rebel in 2014 when he formed a breakaway party known as the United People’s Party (UPP). This followed an internal struggle within SUPP.
Although Wong is the incumbent state assemblyman for Bawan Asan, technically Bawan Asan is still a SUPP seat as UPP is not a BN component party.
Igan became a federal constituency following the 2005 “redistribution exercise”.
Like its neighbour, Tanjung Manis, Igan also has a relatively small electorate with only 17,771 voters with 81% Malay/Melanau, 15% Dayak and 4% Chinese.
Like Tanjung Manis, too, Igan is Melanau territory. Sarawak’s two well-known leaders, Abdul Rahman Yakub and Abdul Taib Mahmud, are from the Melanau community.
In the 1987 state election, a young engineer named Wahab Dolah created the biggest upset in the elections when he defeated Rahman Yakub, thus dashing the hopes of Rahman and his group to unseat Taib as chief minister.
Today, Wahab Dolah, also a Melanau, is the incumbent Igan MP.
In 2008, Wahab did not even have to lift a finger to become Igan’s first MP after his independent opponent withdrew.
In GE13, it was not surprising that Wahab won with a thumping majority of 10,149 votes over his PAS opponent Ajiji Fauzan. Wahab garnered 11,896 votes while Ajiji only managed 1,747 votes.
Like Tanjung Manis again, GE14 is expected to see the same one-sided contest in Igan.
With PAS no longer in the opposition coalition, PKR will most likely take the lead in Igan and offer a token resistance, at best.