‘19% of rural votes ensured BN’s return to power in 2008’

 

(Harakah Daily) – An election watchdog has said that Barisan Nasional needed only 19 percent of total votes in securing its simple majority in the parliament during the last general election.

“The 19 percent votes were from rural areas,” said Tindak Malaysia head PY Wong, and said the blame would lie on the Election Commission’s re-drawing of electoral boundaries.

Wong said as a result of the exercise by EC, there emerged an imbalance ratio of 6 urban votes to 1 rural area votes.

“This perhaps because the rural voters are smarter,” he quipped. 

Despite losing popular votes, BN won in 139 parliamentary constituencies, of out which 112 were the smallest in terms of voters. 

Wong took pot-shots at what he termed as EC’s “wisdom” in setting a 10-days campaign period for the Sarawak state election last year.

“Sarawak is tens of times bigger than Singapore,” he said, comparing the largely rural East Malaysian state to the city-state. 
“How can information reach rural areas at such short time?” he questioned.

Meanwhile, according to Bersih steering committee member Wong Chin Huat, EC’s gerrymandering also contributed to BN’s victory at the 11th general election in 1999. 

“BN won 90.87 percent of parliamentary seats by obtaining just 63.85 percent of votes in 2004. From the mathematical point of view, one vote for BN is equivalent to 1.42 seat, just like how RM1 can be used to buy things worth of RM1.42,” he told the forum “How Clean will the 13th General Elections be?” held in Petaling Jaya last night.

EC chairman Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof, named as a panelist at the forum organised by Tindak Malaysia, was however absent.