Uncommon Sense with Wong Chin Huat: Beyond election petitions
Why bother with election petitions? And what’s beyond these election petitions and all that talk of a unity government? What else do citizens need to be aware of and be vigilant about if Malaysians are to get a cleaner and fairer electoral system come GE14? The Nut Graph asks political scientist Dr Wong Chin Huat.
By Jacqueline Ann Surin, The Nut Graph
IT would seem there is still dust in the air even though it’s been nearly four months since the 5 May 2013 general election known as GE13. Post-elections, Barisan Nasional (BN) filed 21 election petitions while Pakatan Rakyat (PR) lodged 35 of its own in both parliamentary and state seats. Additionally, there has been talk of a unity government even though this has been denied by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.
Why bother with election petitions? And what’s beyond these election petitions and all that talk of a unity government? What else do citizens need to be aware of and be vigilant about if Malaysians are to get a cleaner and fairer electoral system come GE14? The Nut Graph asks political scientist Dr Wong Chin Huat.
Was there any difference in the motivation behind BN’s and behind PR’s election petitions? What’s the purpose of petitioning? Why not just accept the results of GE13?
Candidates file election petitions for two reasons. It’s either to have the election outcome overturned so that they can be declared the rightful winners without fresh elections, or nullified so that they can have a second chance in a new election which should be run fairly.
Election petitions are stories where there are villains. These villains are at best, incompetent people who make stupid but innocent mistakes and at worst, evil people who violate democracy through deliberate fraud and manipulation.
For the PR, the story is straightforward. The villains are the BN and the Election Commission (EC) it controls which denied PR their victory. I doubt that PR was hoping to overturn the results in any of the constituencies they filed petitions for. Rather, their aim was to force re-elections.
Had they secured re-elections in all the 25 parliamentary seats they petitioned for, it would have been a mega season of by-elections. With the remaining 108 seats in BN’s hands and 89 seats in PR’s hands, it would have been a national referendum for the electorate in those 25 constituencies to decide whether PR should be made the new government. Of course, PR would have known there was a fat chance of that happening.
Is the BN suggesting PR is powerful, or that Bersih 2.0 is right about the EC’s incompetence?
For the BN, the story is more complicated. It is perfectly fine for a few candidates to feel wronged by the system. But what message is BN sending by appealing the outcome in 21 out of 727 (nearly 3%) of the parliamentary and state seats it contested? That the PR is so powerful that they can play dirty in so many places? Or that the Bersih 2.0 coalition was right about the EC’s incompetence in conducting elections?
I suspect the real reason for the BN’s many election petitions was insurance. In the event some judges boldly rule in the opposition’s favour, the BN can then count on some court wins to negate those PR victories.
