Former Sabah chief minister Salleh Said Keruak said while there are many ethnic groups in the state, not a single one of them will try to impose themselves over another.
“But in the peninsula, it is very different — it is about Ketuanan Melayu (Malay supremacy). There is no such thing here,” he said during an online forum today.
“We have more than 30 ethnic groups (in Sabah) but everyone can work together even though there are political differences among us.
“If you look at the history of Sabah politics, this is something the peninsula must learn from us. We will fight to win elections but after that we are back together. We manage and celebrate our differences.
“When talking about political development, I think Sabah is much better.”
Salleh also said Sabah embraced political change much earlier than the peninsula, as evidenced by the fact that the state government has changed hands five times over the decades.
The Usukan assemblyman was the special guest speaker at the forum entitled “Sabah from the Ground: The 2020 Elections and the Politics of Survival”.
It was hosted by Taylor’s University and co-hosted with Universiti Malaysia Sabah and the University of Nottingham’s Asia Research Institute.
Salleh noted that this kind of tolerance, which he called the politics of accommodation, was among the three political aspects Sabah parties and politicians needed to subscribe to in order to make it in state politics.
Besides the politics of accommodation, which is basically sharing power among the various races, he said the two other aspects are politics of development and autonomy.
He added that politics of development involved fighting for good infrastructure, jobs, economic opportunities and education, among others, while the politics of autonomy involved fighting for state rights.
“In Sabah, if they (the people) don’t like the party in power, they will just change it. They don’t care.
“The people will observe what is happening and whether the government is still subscribing to the three aspects of politics of development, accommodation and autonomy. These are the basic principles that Sabahans uphold.”
The voting patterns in Sabah are also very much different from that in the peninsula, Salleh said, with the people preferring to vote based on parties, regardless of their performance; on issues and the political environment at the time.
“But in the peninsula, it’s quite clear. The Malays will vote for Malay parties like Umno or PAS while the Chinese may go for MCA, DAP or Gerakan and so will the Indians (who go for Indian-based parties).
“But that doesn’t happen in Sabah. We hold to the belief that we hold the power. That’s why, if we don’t like it, we will change the government … that has been the history of Sabah politics since independence,” he said.