Engage notes the heightened calls by various quarters for Sarawak and Sabah to be allocated 35% of the seats in the lower house of Parliament, the House of Representatives.
These calls were primarily driven by a belief that it was part of the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) before Sarawak, Sabah and Singapore joined Malaya to form Malaysia, that these three territories would be allotted 35% of seats in the House of Representatives.
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% maintained and not the 25.2% that both territories currently have.
Sarawak Premier Abang Johari Openg said on 29 September that it is important that both Borneo territories have 35% of the House of Representative 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% seats to two territories that have a combined electorate of only 17.4% of Malaysia’s total eligible voters, would lead to three major electoral distortions that undermine our representative democracy.
- Sign up for Aliran's free daily email updates or weekly newsletters or both
- Make a one-off donation to Persatuan Aliran Kesedaran Negara, CIMB a/c 8004240948
- Make a pledge or schedule an auto donation to Aliran every month or every quarter
- Become an Aliran member
Our analysis of voter’s data from the 2022 general election reveals these challenges.
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% of the 222-seat House of Representatives.
With a combined electorate of 3.7 million, East Malaysia’s regional average size of a parliamentary constituency is 64,508. This is 68% of the national average of 95,377 voters.
We believe the House of Representatives is bloated, and therefore we reject all calls to increase the number of seats in the House of Representatives.
In a 222-seat House of Representatives, 78 seats are required to achieve the goal of 35%. 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% 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.
Grossly distorts the people’s vote values
Upholding the ‘one person, one vote, one value’ principle in delimitation of constituencies, as enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 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 allocating 35% of seats in the House of Representatives, 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 one person, one vote, one value principle and makes meaningless our representative democracy (see Tables 1 and 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 seats in the peninsula to secure a simple majority of 112 in the House of Representatives.
A reasonable assumption for voter turnout during federal elections is 75% of voters.
To develop a worst-case scenario, we make two further assumptions:
- The winning margin of each seat is 50%-plus-one
- 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 million voters or a mere 9.9% 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 of 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 in the proposal to allocate 35% of seats in the House of Representatives to East Malaysia – 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 people in Malaysia who expect equality and fairness among themselves in all aspects.
On the other hand, the proposal mooted by Projek Sama on 16 September and echoed by Bersih, Rose, Tindak Malaysia and Engage in a joint statement on 22 September – calling for a 35% allocation of senatorial seats to Sarawak and Sabah – is a more realisable solution to assuage the concerns of Sarawak and Sabah that the special rights promised under MA63 would not be eroded and it 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 Senate so that it truly fulfils its purpose. – Engage
AGENDA RAKYAT - Lima perkara utama
- Tegakkan maruah serta kualiti kehidupan rakyat
- Galakkan pembangunan saksama, lestari serta tangani krisis alam sekitar
- Raikan kerencaman dan keterangkuman
- Selamatkan demokrasi dan angkatkan keluhuran undang-undang
- Lawan rasuah dan kronisme
