Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Adenan Satem struck a “delicate balance” by distancing his administration from Putrajaya’s political issues but not enough to cut off ties completely from the federal government, analysts said today.

Dr Oh Ei Sun, a senior fellow at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, said Adenan’s current tactic of playing along with popular sentiment certainly worked out as his popularity among his people were ”enhanced”.

“Adenan is playing a very delicate game — distancing the Sarawak regime just enough from central so as not to be too much associated with the troubles currently besieging the central, while not totally snapping the central-state relations, so as to continue to avail Sarawak of federal largesse,” he told Malay Mail Online.