It’s gerrymandering and malapportionment, stupid!
FMT LETTER: From Stephen Ng, via e-mail
Once again, the Election Commission has defended its position, instead of listening to the rakyat, that Malaysia’s voting system will keep BN in power forever.
By quoting the examples of a number of Commonwealth countries, including Britain, Australia, New Zealand and India, which uses the first past the post voting system, it is telling only half-truth – or in my opinion, a blatant lie – to the whole nation.
No one is disputing that the first past the post is a fair system. If you have 222 members of parliament, and you have 112, you form the simple majority government and if you have 144 seats, you have two-third majority.
During an interview with the Malaysian Insider, EC’s deputy chairman, Wan Ahmad Wan Omar is still trying to hoodwink the nation, with what is on the surface.
By doing this, Wan Ahmad is blatantly lying to the nation that the country’s democracy is as alive as other more mature democracies in the world.
However, what he has failed to do is to reveal the popularity votes in these countries, compared to a pariah system that is allowed to continue. In any case, if a similar situation had occurred in Australia, for example, the Members of Parliament from both political divides would have corrected the discrepancies by making sure that the government of the day represents as closely as possible the majority of the voters.
Whereas Malaysia’s Election Commission is only answerable to the prime minister, in these more mature democracies, the Election Commission as well as the other important organisations, such as the anti-corruption body, are answerable to the parliament.
Deaf to truth, stop talking nonsense
What 505 Blackout is all about is nothing to do with the first past the post democracy. No one even disputes it, until Wan Ahmad raised it up in order to justify the position of the Election Commission.
What the rakyat have been shouting about are two words: “Malapportionment,” which means unequally-sized constituencies and “Gerrymandering”, which means the manipulation of electoral boundaries to favour the ruling party.
For example, Kapar has over 100,000 voters, whereas Putrajaya has only 6,000 voters. By studying the demographics of the country, it is possible to re-delienate the constituencies based on the voting patterns of the people.
For example, based on a state constituency alone like Paya Jeras, a former Umno stronghold, which had collapsed to PAS for the first time in 53 years, the constituency can be broken into two instead of one.
The voting stations give an indication of the voting patterns in each part of the constituency; therefore, it is easy for Umno to take back Paya Jeras, by redelineating the constituency to retain Kubu Gajah and Paya Jeras under Paya Jeras, while Aman Puri and Taman Ehsan goes under Bukit Lanjan. Although this is for the time being a hypothetical case, it is how gerrymandering has been taking place in the past.
Because of gerrymandering, each constituency no longer follows the logical geographical area or the number of people represented by the elected Member of Parliament or State Assembly. N45 Selat Kelang is a very good example, where the entire constituency is separated by land and sea.
