The Malaysian Insight

THERE is plenty of evidence that the Election Commission’s redelineation proposal creates malapportionment that puts the opposition at a disadvantage, critics said in response to an aide of the prime minister’s, who today accused the opposition of politicising the exercise.

They said the prime minister’s chief press aide, Tengku Sariffuddin Tengku Ahmad, should study the proposed exercise more closely. The EC is seeking to redraw boundaries for more than 120 out of 222 parliamentary constituencies.

Federal Territory Amanah chairman Dr Mohd Hatta Ramli said redelineation was meant to ensure there was a fair distribution of voters – with acceptable deviations – between rural and urban seats.

“True redelineation is allowed by the constitution but the PM’s aide does not study the proposal by EC thoroughly.

“Creating more super-constituencies with more than 100,000 voters each is not in line with the one-man-one-vote principle,” he said.

While the EC had constitutional backing to conduct redelineation, current political sentiments suggest an ulterior motive of favouring the ruling party.

“The shifting of voters of a particular ethnic group from one seat to another is so obvious in this redelineation process, thereby creating new racial make-ups of the seats.”

A Penang Institute study, published in January 2017, showed that the EC’s redelineation exercise worsened malapportionment, covering nearly a quarter of the federal and state seats in Peninsular Malaysia.

The study said EC’s proposal would worsen malapportionment in up to 36 federal and 96 state constituencies.

One of the examples was how EC chose not to correct undersized parliamentary constituencies in Selangor, such as Sabak Bernam (37,126 voters) and Sungai Besar (42,833), when the average constituency size in the state was 94,469 voters.

Bersatu strategist Dr Rais Husin also felt the redelineation did not reflect the one-person-one-vote philosophy.

“That is the best equation in democracy. But you cannot expect such basics from those who rely on gerrymandering to stay in power.

“This redelineation is done to favour Barisan Nasional by creating more seats by race,” said the former Umno leader.

Seats by race

Ilham Centre executive director Hisommuddin Bakar said he agreed that a redelineation was necessary due to demographic, economic and geographic changes since 2003, when the last exercise was conducted.

“But what is disputed here is that the current redelineation does not adhere to the principle of one-man-one-vote.

“The seats are still disproportionate, for example, the Sabak Bernam seat only has 37,318 voters compared to Kapar (127,012). Another example is the Kota Raja seat, which is spread over three local councils (jurisdictions).

“Did EC not take these factors into account when it did its proposal?” said Hisommuddin, whose centre conducts voter surveys.

The 2003 delimitation exercise also showed how EC had contributed towards gerrymandering and malapportionment to help the ruling party by breaking up Malay-majority seats, which were then seen as pro-opposition following the 1999 elections, he added.

“And now that GE12 and GE13 have shown that mixed and Chinese-majority seats are pro-opposition, EC is again using the same strategy to break up this demographic to help the government.

“This only shows that BN is not confident of winning GE14 despite having the (advantage) of 3-cornered fights after PAS has broken ties with the opposition.

“To combat Bersatu and Dr Mahathir Mohamad, BN needs a second ‘handicap’ – that is for EC to redelineate. But this could end up being more disastrous for BN if there is also a Malay swing,” said Hisommuddin.

Former Bersih chairman and human rights lawyer Ambiga Sreenevasan said it was strange that the executive was commenting on such cases.

“It does not bode well for EC that the executive feels the need to defend them when the EC’s independence requires them to be free of the executive to perform its duties.

“There also appears to be a lack of appreciation for a cardinal principle of the rule of law that everyone is entitled to access to justice and equal access to the courts.

“To describe the redelineation cases as an ‘exploitation of the legal system’ denigrates this principle and is a slur on the judiciary who are the ultimate guardians of the law,” said Ambiga, who represented Selangor in its attempt to challenge the constitutionality of the redelineation exercise.

Tengku Sariffuddin had said the opposition was exploiting the law by taking EC to court over the redelineation.

And as two appeals in the Selangor case are still pending before the Court of Appeal, such comments may be seen as a direct interference, Ambiga added. – December 19, 2017.