Civil society group warns opposition to not agree to seat increase

Malaysian lawmakers, Tindak Malaysia opined should be consistent in its effort to push the Election Commissions (EC) for fair re-delineation of electoral boundaries and electoral reforms.

“Has a study been made to justify increase of seats?” questioned the movement's founder PY Wong at a press conference aimed to call for fair and transparent delimitation exercise on Friday.

“Seat increase means more money is wasted during elections and more money to pay salaries which inevitably leads to malapportionment and gerrymandering, more divide and rule.

Wong was commenting on the EC announcement on Sunday that the commission will go ahead with a delimitation exercise this year, which may involve an increase in the number of seats.

“We consider the opposition parties' agreement to an increase of seats as a betrayal to the rakyat. We will say don’t vote for them,” he added.

Echoing similar sentiment, Bersih 2.0 steering committee chairperson Maria Chin Abdullah said emphasis should be placed on raising the quality of lawmakers, not the quantity.

“Why do we need more members of parliament (MP)? What we need is more quality MPs that will bring substantive debates to the parliament, instead of the shouting matches we see now. That is not what we need.”

“Bersih has started a parliamentary reform initiative with the aim to bring about better policies and laws into parliamentary debates. That is the direction we should be heading towards. We do not need more MPs so that political parties feel they have better chance of winning the elections,” said the rights activist.

She also cautioned the opposition to not be taken into believing that having more seats could bring about a higher chance to winning the next general elections.

“Some of the opposition political parties feel that seat increase will also improve their chances of winning the upcoming general election. However, it has been proven historically that a seat increase has always been in favour for the ruling Barisan Nasional.”

DAP lawmaker Dr Ong Kian Ming said that Pakatan Rakyat will only give its nod of approval to a seat increase if the proposed map by the EC is fair.

“Based on history, the EC hasn’t done it in fairly but we can’t reject the possibility that it will be fair until the map is unveiled.”

“We will object if the proposed map is unfairly represented. We will definitely not agree to a constitutional amendment to allow the government to increase the number of seats,” said the Serdang MP.

A two-thirds majority vote is needed in the Parliament to approve any changes in the event the delimitation exercise involved an increase in the number of seats.

When asked whether an increase in representatives at state and parliament constituencies was necessary, Ong said that in order to reduce discrepancies, more often than not such measures will have to be taken to enable a fairer representation for each voter.

"Right now, there are some seats with more than 100 thousand voters while some have less than 30 thousand. At the very least, the discrepancies in their size of the seats need to be reduced."

"In order to reduce discrepancies, there is usually a need to increase the number of MPs," he added, "Most of the developed countries adopt the one man, one vote, one value. So the size of the seats must be equal."

EC chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof had said the EC was expected to gazette the notice for the long overdue delimitation exercise at the end of this year, having deferred the scheduled exercise in 2011.

The last delimitation exercise was carried out in March 2003.