Stupid Brown. Stupid, Stupid Bown.

Clare Rewcastle Brown is the sister-in-law of Gordon Brown, a past Prime Minister of England. Post-Thatcher, Gordon Brown is the shortest serving British Prime Minister to date.

Clare Brown is 51 and was born in Sarawak while her British parents lived there, but returned to England when she was eight. According to the Evening Standard from England, she never visited Sarawak again until she was 46.

Oddly enough, Brown claims to have a passion for the rainforests of Sarawak.

But of course. I mean, she was born there and she lived there until she would have been in primary two.

That’s a life-long bond. That’s attachment. That’s Brown’s idea of passion.

She so loved the rainforests of Sarawak that when she visited Sarawak almost four decades after she left the state as a child, she was, “shocked to the core,” to see what she terms the, “degradation,” of her beloved rainforests.

Brown somehow calculated that 95 per cent of Sarawak's rainforest had been cut down and replaced by logging and palm oil plantations. New York City has a greater percentage of green, it sounds like.

About two months ago, Brown went public and internationally so, too, with her offensive on Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud, Sarawak’s Chief Minister.

"I honestly believe that Taib is probably one of the worst environmental criminals on the planet and that he has taken huge amounts from the country of my birth,” she was quoted as saying, by no less a publication than England’s Evening Standard.

The country of her birth. My oh my. Such patriotism?

Two months ago was of course, also two months before the Sarawak state elections, what a coincidence. She said then, of her ‘David and Goliath’ struggle, “I think our reports are having a huge effect and that there's a groundswell for change,” adding, "you've got to take heart from what is happening in the Middle East to rulers who seemed equally immovable until just a few weeks ago.

If Hosni Mobarak had been just the worst environmental criminal in the country of a non-Egyptian’s birth, my guess is that he would still be Egyptian President.

Stupid Brown.

Tahrir Square in Cairo had approximately 225,000 protestors demanding Mobarak’s resignation in February this year, NOT for his cutting down of trees. In comparison, the triangular island in downtown Kuching can hold maybe 13 demonstrators. A 14^th person would get struck down by passing vehicles, that’s how small it is.

Did I say stupid already?

In any case, Malaysians will not take to the streets with parangs and keris. We will vote, and we will choose. Besides, we have probably the most influential bloggers per capita as proven in the 2008 General Elections. They were vigilant and sleepless in Kuching, recently.

Now Taib has won.

Abdul Taib Mahmud - lets dispense with titles since none of the Browns seem to have any, and level the playing field a little - is into his 30^th year as Chief Minister of Sarawak.

Taib, who was born in Sarawak to successive generations of Sarawak natives, was raised in Sarawak until adulthood when he went abroad to study. After obtaining a law degree, getting married, and having a first child Australia, Taib went home to Sarawak.

He began his political career in his home state, but soon after, spent many learning years in the seemingly more advanced Semenanjung, to the point of attaining various ministerial positions within the Federal cabinet.

Luxe and lucre were all but promised to Taib as a Federal minister yet, the son of Sarawak returned to his Bumi Kenyalang.

In the past 29 years, Sarawak has grown at a faster rate than the previous 29. Overall, the development and growth of Sarawak has benefited Sarawakians rather than not.

Refute that, Brown.

Sarawak’s timber-based exports at the end of last year came to RM7 billion and it wasn’t grown overnight. In terms of palm oil, Sarawak is expecting a 15% growth this year to 2.5 million tones of CPO.

What would you rather have, Brown?

For Sarawak to remain primitive? For Sarawak to be kept as a nature reserve, to compensate the world for the timber cut down over the centuries in the rest of the world, closer to yours? So you can come to Sarawak again in another 38 years and reminisce?

It appears that Sarawakians would rather have Taib.