If there is one thing that practically every adult Sarawakian today agrees on, it is that Sarawak is different from Peninsular Malaysia.
This is most commonly expressed in the profound distaste for how almost everything in the country is seen through the prism of race and religion.
Sarawakians will point to the easy everyday interactions among themselves despite differences in race, religion or ethnicity as compared with those prevailing in the peninsula.
While this may be true, this perception of distinctiveness tends to fall apart on closer inspection.
What is also true is a smug sense Sarawakians have that as things are seemingly messy and uncertain — particularly where national politics is concerned — Sarawak is an oasis of stability and moving forward.
Is there much more than meets the eye in all this and is Sarawak truly building a solid foundation for the journey ahead, let alone a plausible pathway for the whole country?
Nothing can be right if the politics is not right. And here again, Sarawakians may be forgiven for thinking they have the big political questions settled and the foundations set.
It is true that under Premier Tan Sri Abang Johari Openg, the state ruling coalition — restyled Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) after the then Sarawak Barisan Nasional left its defeated federal counterpart in the wake of the 2018 general election — has gone from strength to strength.
Abang Johari achieved quite a feat when he topped the performance of the popular late Tan Sri Adenan Satem in the 2021 state election.
Adenan won big in the 2016 election but died prematurely in 2017, with Abang Johari inheriting the almost fresh mandate. The opposition was reduced to a stump of six seats in the 81-seat Sarawak Assembly.
Flushed with an overwhelming electoral mandate and previously unheard-of funds in the state coffers from a new tax on oil and gas, the premier has been introducing a raft of major infrastructure and green-energy projects.
Alas, boldness and daring on the economic front may be lacking on the political front.
Many will likely argue against any need to tinker with state politics if it has served GPS so well so far. I would argue that it is precisely when things appear so rosy that a bold leader with vision will have the leverage and leeway to set state politics on a path that is not only sustainable but truly trail-blazing.
Sarawak politics, as it is, is old-school, needlessly divisive and based on the supremacy of some over others that Sarawakians so easily see in the peninsula but prefer to avert their eyes from, in their own state.
A growing number of people are no longer averting their eyes, as seen in sporadic if disorganised protests across a host of issues. They, however, tap into latent disquiet over the status quo.
This status quo was forged when the Iban-based Pesaka and Malay-Muslim-based Bumiputera parties merged in 1973 to form the enduring political force that is Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB).
The alliance is held together by elite common interests. It needs to be expensively maintained through an expansion of the two elites which agreed to the merger but remain separate.
But my own sense is that this half-century-old alliance is only half complete.
Although PBB on its own can rule the state, it keeps its three other coalition partners artfully onside while keeping them on their toes.
Sometimes the partners are at each other's throats and PBB is not beyond poaching their seats to buttress its already overwhelming political supremacy, come election time when seats are apportioned out.
Sarawakians need to ask some hard questions whether all this is good in the long run and if not, what ultimately must give.
* The writer views developments in the nation, region and wider world from his vantage point in Kuching
