KUALA LUMPUR, April 19 — Pakatan Rakyat (PR) federal lawmakers expressed today their openness to a larger Parliament created in the Election Commission’s (EC) redelineation exercise to ensure voting districts are spread out more evenly.

PAS’ Dr Hatta Ramli, DAP’s Dr Ong Kian Ming and PKR’s R. Sivarasa also dismissed the opposition by electoral reform groups Tindak Malaysia and Bersih, and political scientist James Chin, against a seat increase, who had said that having extra MPs would not improve the quality of the 222-member Parliament.

“I agree that Parliament is, to some extent, dysfunctional, but this is because there are no proper committees,” Sivarasa told reporters today after a forum jointly organised by the Bar Council, Tindak Malaysia and Bersih on a legislative seat increase.

He pointed out that the Indonesian Parliament has a dozen permanent bipartisan committees that monitor the government in areas like defence and education, compared to Malaysia that has no such committees.

The Subang MP stressed that an increase of some federal seats was necessary to reduce malapportionment, or the unevenness in voting districts throughout the country.

DAP’s Serdang MP Ong said that additional seats should be created in states like Kelantan, Terengganu and Kedah, as they did not receive extra seats in the last redelineation exercise in 2003.

He also said that his own constituency, which was the second-largest with over 133,000 voters in the 13th general election, and Kapar, the biggest constituency in the country, should be split into two.

Former Temerloh MP Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah from Umno, who also spoke at the forum, similarly supported an increase of federal seats to reduce malapportionment between states.

He pointed out that there is an average of 79,000 voters per Parliament seat in Terengganu, 62,000 voters per seat in Johor, and 52,000 voters per seat in Pahang.

“In Selangor, there are two million voters and 22 Parliament seats, which is equivalent to 93,000 voters per seat,” Saifuddin told the forum, referring to the most industrialised state in Malaysia that is controlled by PR.

Chin, with Monash University’s Malaysia campus, told reporters at the forum this morning that it was pointless to add more MPs, arguing that Parliament was already “dysfunctional”.

Bersih representative Wong Chin Huat, who was also at the forum, said that having a bigger Parliament would reduce the time that each parliamentarian would get to debate.

“The size of Parliament must not be subjected to redelineation,” Wong told reporters.

Tindak Malaysia founder PY Wong said the number of federal seats should be maintained and that a deviation of 10 per cent from the average size of a seat should be enforced instead.

“If we don’t increase the number of seats, we remove one matter of manipulation,” he told reporters.

In February, EC chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof said the commission was mulling enlarging the 222-member Parliament by 15 to 20 per cent, with seats being added in Selangor, Johor, Perak, Kelantan, Terengganu and Kedah, among others, The Star daily reported.

He reportedly said the redelineation report was three-quarters complete and would be ready by June.