DAP calls for ‘one-man, one-vote’ polls reforms
Boo Su-Lyn, TMI
The electoral system should be reformed to allow a government to be elected based on the popular vote, DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng said today.
He pointed out that although Pakatan Rakyat (PR) won the popular vote at 51 per cent in Election 2013, Barisan Nasional (BN) had formed federal government by winning 60 per cent of the 222 federal seats.
“PR winning 51 per cent of the popular vote, yet only 40 per cent of the parliamentary seats, cries out for genuine polls reforms that respects the ‘one-man, one-vote principle’ to save democracy,” Lim (picture) said in a statement.
“Malaysians who voted by a clear majority for PR over BN would see the results as perverse in that BN lost the popular vote won government, whilst PR won the popular vote lost power. This is black becoming white and white becoming black,” he added.
The Penang chief minister noted that PR had won 5.6 million votes, surpassing BN’s 5.2 million votes by 386,000 votes.
The last time an Umno-led coalition lost the popular vote was in 1969, then contested by BN’s predecessor, the Alliance Party.
BN’s tally in the 13th general election was slashed to 133 federal seats, just 21 seats above the 112 seats required to win federal power.
The coalition was saved largely through Sabah, Sarawak and Johor that formed a significant portion of the seats it won.
Gerrymandering, which is the manipulation of electoral boundaries, has allowed BN to win many small rural seats, while PR needed to win a large number of votes in an urban seat in contrast.
Election watchdog Tindak Malaysia said last April that one rural voter was worth an average of six urban voters, based on the way electoral boundaries were drawn.
The Putrajaya federal seat, for example, has 15,791 voters, compared to Kapar that has nine times the number of voters at 144,159.
Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim led a mass rally in Petaling Jaya last night to protest against alleged vote-rigging in Election 2013 that he said enabled BN to win federal power.
Tens of thousands flooded the MBPJ Stadium in Kelana Jaya yesterday, dressed mostly in black to symbolise the “death” of democracy.
