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Wednesday, October 8, 2014

How EC carry out gerrymandering without BN’s two-third majority – Ong Eu Leong



I can understand Dr Wong Chin-Huat's assertion that the public should not pay for more MPs, but how does not getting an increase in the new parliamentary seats prevent or stop or limit gerrymandering by the Election Commission?
In the 2003 delimitation, Kedah did not get any new seat, be it parliament or state, but the gerrymandering was still carried out by EC. It transferred Gurun state seat from Merbok to Yan/Jerai, and also transferred Derga state seat from Alor Setar to Pokok Sena and they cross transferred voting districts between Ayer Hitam (won by PAS in 1999) and Kota Seputeh.
All these were done without needing the 2/3 majority in Parliment. It just required a simple majority by BN to pass the gerrymandering.
In the 2003 delimitation, EC transferred out the West Jelutong voting district from Batu Lanchang state seat in Penang and brought in Solok Batu Lanchang plus Tingkat Jelutong from Sg Pinang and Bukit Gelugor. Voila!, DAP lost its stronghold Batu Lanchang by 139 votes.
But if the voting districts were not disturbed, DAP would have won the state seat by 283 votes with West Jelutong contributing 111 majority votes for DAP.
Mind you, there are 29 parliamentary seats that Pakatan Rakyat won by below 6,000 votes and also 32 seats that BN won by 3,000 votes or less, which they definitely wanted to strengthen.
If PR lost half the 29 seats and failed to wrest any more seats from BN, BN will get back the 2/3 majority.
The second thing that we should seriously consider is the proposal by Tindak Malaysia, which will retain the same 222 number of seats in Parliament, but it involves the redrawing of the boundaries of all 222 parliamentary seats.
When EC tweaked the boundaries of some state and parliamentary seats in Selangor during the 2003 delimitation, it caused total chaos in the 2004 general election. What will happen if all the 222 seats were tweaked?
Even if Tindak Malaysia's proposal is accepted by PR or the public, it still has to go through EC before it can be approved and passed in Parliament. So, does a right minded person think EC will accept this type of proposal and submit it to Parliament for approval?
After all these years, PR finally managed to deny BN 2/3 majority in Parliament and 4 states, plus 3 states coming under PR. Couldn't PR make full use of it to reduce the effect of gerrymandering perpetuated by EC from the 1960s until now?
Can PR bargain with EC to accept their alternative proposal that will at least reduce some of the effects of past gerrymandering? 
It will be a win-win situation for PAS and PR as a whole, plus more importantly, it can provide a fairer choice to the people, whether they wanted to deny BN 2/3 majority again in the coming election.
Or will we accept Wong's and Tindak Malaysia's proposal and bury our heads in the sand hoping that the gerrymandering will just disappear under the watchful eyes of a crooked EC? Ostrich’s symptom? You bet.
* Ong Eu Leong is secretary, Penang PKR Election Committee.
- TMI

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