COMMENT The
recently completed May 5 general election (GE13) revealed some
interesting facts and figures based on the results as published by the
Election Commission.
There have been, for a long time, much
criticism of the ‘first past the post' (FPTP) election system we
practise in Malaysia, because of what is inherent in this antiquated
system.
The FPTP is one of the legacies of the British rule in
Malaya and was based on giving all segments of the populace a voice in
Parliament. Hence, constituency boundaries were drawn based on this
segmental need for representation.
The
original intention was noble indeed, that people in Sungai Buloh should
have a voice in Parliament, just as those from Shah Alam, even though
the Shah Alam constituency may have a population five times larger.
To prevent abuse and disproportional representation, certain limits
were set when our founding fathers drew up the federal constitution. One
important feature was that there should not be a population variance
greater than 20 percent between the smallest and largest constituencies.
This safeguard was gradually eroded by successive ruling governments,
since they enjoyed two-thirds majority Parliament to amend the country's
laws, until this sanity check on societal representation was totally
removed.
As a result of this, today we have 26,000 voters in
Putrajaya, Igan (18,000) and Lubok Antu (19,000) commanding the same
parliamentary voice as those in Kapar (144,000), Serdang (133,000) and
Gombak (123,000).
This hardly seems fair when three small zones
command an equal representation in Parliament, compared with their
brethren who are at least five times larger, at least from the
perspective of a majority rule.
Disproportionate representation
Criticism of such disproportionate representation led to some
countries, such as New Zealand, Australia and Israel, modifying their
electoral constituencies to be more representative and hence, the FPTP
no longer applies in toto in these countries.
In a related
example, besides throwing 90,000 tonnes of tea into the Atlantic Ocean, a
new country was born some 237 years ago simply because its ‘rakyat'
couldn't accept taxation without representation. One can draw similar
parallels, if this inequitable scenario was to ensue here in Malaysia.
The
greatest disservice of this FPTP system was shown clearly in Malaysia
in GE13 when 915,560 voters in East Malaysia sent 48 BN candidates to
our Parliament, or simply put, the average vote cost per BN lawmaker was
19,074.
Because of the severe skewering (aka gerrymandering) of
the constituency delineations, it cost an average of 84,053 votes to
get one Pakatan Rakyat MP in East Malaysia, or 4.4 times more expensive.
On
the national average, it cost BN 39,381 votes per MP as opposed to
Pakatan's 63,191 votes. Quite frankly, Pakatan had to work 60 percent
harder than the BN had to.
What this means is that unless the
present delineation boundaries are redrawn to fix this severe
misrepresentation of societal voice, any opposition will need about 60
percent of the national votes to be on par with BN come election time,
forever.
Here, I dare opine that GE13 was largely won by BN by
capitalising on the severely disproportional FPTP system, rather than on
phantom voters, repeat voters and such. Several jumbo jets full of
Bangladeshis, Burmese and Nepalese could not have caused the damage to
Pakatan as done by this antiquated Westminster delineation system.
From a strategic point, there should have been more focus in the
territories where the opposition could have got more "bang for its
ringgit" (pun intended) because the voter distribution and pattern
(based on past election results) would have been known upfront anyway.
Admittedly,
getting Pakatan's voice to the people in the jungles of Borneo would
have been a Herculean task, given the physical and political hurdles.
However, mathematically speaking, if Pakatan had won the same number of
seats from the 915,560 voters and maintained the same results in the
peninsula, it would be firmly in power now.
Perhaps that's the
reason why the BN is believed to have chartered several flights to carry
voters from the peninsula to Sabah and Sarawak. I'm inclined to believe
that the BN knew, from day one, that this was how it would win GE13.
Some interesting facts Based on the Election Commission website, let me highlight these other interesting facts from the FPTP vis-à-vis GE13:
1) BN received 46.2 percent of the popular votes in Peninsular Malaysia
and 54 percent in East Malaysia, or a national average of 47.4 percent.
2) Based on this, BN was able to garner almost 51 percent of the
parliamentary seats in the peninsula and 87.3 percent of those in Sabah
and Sarawak, for a national average of 60 percent, or 133 seats.
3) Interestingly, 8.2 percent of the voters (in Sabah and Sarawak) gave
BN 22 percent of the parliamentary seats, meaning 39.2 percent of the
voters (in the peninsula) gave it the remaining 38 percent in
Parliament.
4) Pakatan received 54 percent of the popular votes
in Peninsular Malaysia and 35 percent in East Malaysia, for a national
average of 51 percent.
5) Based on the above, Pakatan was only
able to garner 49 percent of the parliamentary seats in the peninsula
and 12.7 percent of that in Sabah and Sarawak, for a national average of
40 percent, or 89 seats.
6) It cost Pakatan 21 percent and 441
percent more votes per MP in the peninsula and East Malaysia
respectively, to be on par with BN. On average nationally, Pakatan had
to work 60 percent harder per MP than the BN.
7)
Because they only formed 29.8 percent of the voters in GE13, contrary
to the "Chinese tsunami" conspiracy theory, even if 100 percent of
Chinese Malaysians (and for good measure, let's also throw in 100
percent of Indian Malaysians as well) voted for the opposition, there is
no way Pakatan could have logically garnered the support of 5,623,984
Malaysians.
Conservatively adjusting for a 25 percent Chinese
support for MCA and Gerakan (as was seen where there was a large Chinese
voter base), at least three million voters therein were
Malay/bumiputera.
This means, conservatively, 42 percent of the
Malay/bumiputera electorate in Malaysia actually voted for Pakatan
nationally. To put this into proper context, there was no such Chinese
tsunami but instead, it was a Malay/bumiputera tsunami because 56
percent of the opposition's votes actually came from the
Malays/bumiputera.
For Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak to have
made this arithmetic blunder publicly was totally ill-advised and it has
now caused needless uneasiness among the rakyat.
8) Finally, as
explained earlier, 915,560 people, who are basically very removed from
urban and national politicking, more or less sealed the fate of
11,054,577 voters or about 29 million people in Malaysia - thanks to the
FPTP system.
Seriously and practically speaking, would anybody
consider 3.2 percent (915,560) of Malaysians deciding the future of the
country a fair run of democracy under the FPTP voting system?
Without a concerted effort from our MPs to make our country fairer by
insisting on equitable representation in Parliament, it will indeed be
very difficult for Najib to ask for national reconciliation when the
very premise of his assertion was fundamentally flawed.
If you don't know what's broken, how can you fix it?
DATO RAMESH RAJARATNAM is a chartered accountant and a keen follower of Malaysian politics.
