When undergraduate Veveonah Mosibin uploaded a video of herself climbing a tree in the northern tip of Sabah in June to get Internet access for an online exam, it quickly became a viral icon of the lack of infrastructural development in Malaysia's second-poorest state.

But it was only when snap polls were called in July - after defectors deprived Chief Minister Shafie Apdal of control of the state legislature - that it became a touchpaper political issue.