04/10/2024
Press Release from ENGAGE
Dated: 4 October 2024
35 PERCENT DEWAN RAKYAT SEATS TO SARAWAK AND SABAH WILL UNDERMINE REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY
ENGAGE notes the heightened calls by various quarters for Sarawak and Sabah to be allocated 35 percent of the seats in our Lower House of Parliament, the Dewan Rakyat (DR35%). These calls were primarily driven by a belief that it was part of Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) before Sarawak, Sabah and Singapore joined Malaya to form Malaysia, that these three territories would be allotted 35 percent of seats in the Dewan Rakyat.
The argument follows that with the withdrawal of Singapore from the union in 1965, Sarawak and Sabah should have inherited Singapore's seats and the 35 percent maintained and not the 25.2 percent that both territories currently have.
The Premier of Sarawak, Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Abang Johari said on 29 September that it is important that both Borneon territories have 35 percent of Dewan Rakyat seats to safeguard any attempts to cancel MA63 and all the rights promised under it.
While ENGAGE fully appreciates his and many East Malaysians' concern over MA63, we believe that allocating 35 percent seats to two territories that have a combined electorate of only 17.4 percent of Malaysia's total eligible voters, would lead to three major electoral distortions that undermine our representative democracy. Our analysis of voter's data from GE15 reveals these challenges.
1. Exacerbates inter-state malapportionment. The apportionment of federal seats is determined by Article 46 of the Federal Constitution. In compliance with this article, East Malaysia (including Labuan) now has 57 seats or 25.7 percent of the 222 seats Dewan Rakyat.
With a combined electorate of 3.7 mil, East Malaysia's regional average size of a parliamentary constituency is 64,508. This is 68 percent of the national average of 95,377 voters.
In a 222 seat Dewan Rakyat, 78 seats are required to achieve the goal of 35 percent. Therefore, 21 seats will have to be added to the current 57 seats for East Malaysia.
The East Malaysia average would then drop to 47,140 voters. This is 49 percent of the national average.
The result would be a worsening of representation in already under-represented states like Selangor and Terengganu. As we show in Tables 1 and 2, their average per constituency would be 193,571 and 131,837 respectively.
2. Grossly distorts the vote values of Malaysians. Upholding the ‘one person, one vote, one value’ (OPOVOV) principle in delimitation of constituencies as enshrined in International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), is a fundamental doctrine in representative democracy.
While every person who is eligible to vote is allowed to vote, the number of voters assigned to each constituency determines the value of a voter's vote in comparison to another in a different constituency.
In our analysis, after DR35%, the vote value of an East Malaysian appreciated from 1.64 to 2.58. This means one East Malaysian has 2.58 times as much Federal electoral power as a Peninsula voter.
Interstate comparison shows worse disparities. For example, one East Malaysian voter has 4.1 times the Federal electoral power of a Selangor voter. This clearly violates the OPOVOV principle and make meaningless our representative democracy. (See Table 1 & 3)
3. Power disproportionality between regional political parties. One result of vastly increasing the vote values of East Malaysians will be a supercharging of the power of East Malaysians political parties.
If East Malaysians control 78 of 222 seats, they will need only 34 Peninsular seats to secure a simple majority of 112 in the Dewan Rakyat.
A reasonable assumption for voter turnout during federal elections is 75 percent of voters. To develop a worst-case scenario, we make two further assumptions: (1) The winning margin of each seat is 50 percent plus one; (2) the 34 seats from the Peninsula are from the smallest constituencies.
The result is the worst case scenario, a mathematical possibility: the total number of voters who elect the federal government would only be 2.1 mil voters or a mere 9.9 percent of total voters nationwide.
This disproportionality in power accorded to regional parties flies against the principle of democracy where a government is formed by the collective will of the majority voters whose vote values are more or less equal through elections. All governments formed through such distortions are unlikely to be stable or popularly supported. (See Table 4)
ENGAGE hopes that this analysis of actual voters data has empirically revealed the real challenges to the DR35% proposal - the major distortions it would bring to our electoral and political system, thereby rendering it unacceptable to most stakeholders, namely state governments, political parties and most importantly, the majority of Malaysians who expect equality and fairness among themselves in all aspects.
On the other hand, the proposal mooted by Projek SAMA on 16 September (https://www.themalaysianinsight.com/s/487776) and echoed by Bersih, Rose, Tindak Malaysia and Engage in a joint statement on 22 September (https://www.malaysiakini.com/columns/720056), calling for a 35 percent allocation of Senatorial seats to Sarawak and Sabah, is a more realisable solution to assuage the concerns of Sarawak and Sabah that special rights promised under MA63 would not be eroded and is more likely to gain the support of all stakeholders. The purpose of an Upper House in a bicameral system is to protect state interests, and this case, the regional interest of Sarawak and Sabah. Let's reform the Dewan Negara so that it truly fulfills its purpose.
Statement issued by:
The EXCO of ENGAGE
