KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 17 — The Election Commission (EC) is using "ethnic gerrymandering” by changing the ethnic voting demographics in Selangor seats to help the ruling party Umno win them in the next general election, a DAP MP claimed today.

Serdang MP Ong Kian Ming said EC's recent second public notice on its redelineation exercise in Selangor appears to show that it was reverting the boundaries of Selangor's parliament and state seats back to the boundaries previously used in the 2013 general elections (GE13).

"But a deeper examination of the polling districts that were shifted shows the Election Commission is guilty of ‘ethnic gerrymandering’ with the intention of helping Barisan Nasional (specifically Umno) win back some of these marginal state seats by increasing the percentage of Malay voters in these seats and shifting non-Malay voters to safe Pakatan Harapan state seats,” the DAP assistant political education director said in a statement today.

Ong was referring to the EC's second notice that was published on Monday after it completed the first round of local enquiries to hear objections to its proposals to redraw electoral boundaries and shift voters around in Selangor. Selangor voters, the state government and local authorities will now have one month to object.

In the same statement, Ong said that there were six federal Opposition-held state seats in Selangor where the percentage of Malay voters went up by more than five per cent as a result of the EC's revised proposal in the second notice. He showed six individual charts for these seats.

For the N11 Ijok seat previously won by PKR in GE13 by 739 votes, the Malay voters percentage will go up from 50 per cent to 60.4 per cent, while ethnic Chinese and ethnic Indian votes will go down by 2.1 per cent and 8.2 per cent respectively, Ong's chart showed.

For the N18 Hulu Kelang seat that PAS won by 2,881 votes in GE13, the Malay voters percentage will increase from 80.8 per cent to 86.6 per cent, while the ethnic Chinese and ethnic Indian votes will decrease by 5.6 per cent and 0.3 per cent, his chart showed.

In the N20 Lembah Jaya seat won by PAS by 8,713 votes in GE13, the EC's second proposal will increase Malay voters percentage from 54.5 per cent to 62.2 per cent, while the proportion of ethnic Chinese and ethnic Indian voters will fall by 7.2 per cent and 0.5 per cent.

In the N21 Chempaka seat which PAS won by 9,608 votes and which the EC proposed to be renamed as Pandan Indah, the proportion of Malay voters will go up from 53 per cent to 61.7 per cent, while the Chinese and Indian votes will drop by 8.3 per cent and 0.6 per cent.

For the N51 Sijangkang seat previously won by PAS by 766 votes, the percentage of Malay votes will go up from 66.6 per cent to 71.7 per cent as a result of the EC's second proposal, while the Chinese and Indian votes proportion will decline by 6.4 per cent and 1.0 per cent.

And for the N53 Morib seat that PAS won by 2,942 votes, the Malay vote will go up from 62.5 per cent to 73.4 per cent, while the Chinese and Indian votes will drop by 9.6 per cent and 1.1 per cent, his chart showed.

In three more charts, Ong then went on to highlight three state seats which the federal opposition had previously won and which will have a higher proportion of Chinese voters as a result of the EC's second proposal.

For the N19 Bukit Antarabangsa seat which PKR's Datuk Seri Azmin Ali ― the Selangor Mentri Besar ― had won by 4,044 votes, it will become a Chinese majority seat with the ethnic Chinese votes going up from 35.6 per cent to 50.5 per cent, while the Malay votes will drop from 57.1 per cent to 41.6 per cent and the Indian vote will grow by 1.0 per cent.

For the DAP-held N22 Teratai seat previously won by 13,646 votes, the Chinese vote percentage will grow from 59 per cent to 62.1 per cent, while Malay votes will fall by 5.3 per cent and Indian votes will grow by 2.1 per cent.

As for the N52 Teluk Datuk seat also won by DAP with 5,391 votes and which EC suggests be renamed as Banting, the Chinese vote proportion will go up from 45 per cent to 59.6 per cent and the Indian votes will grow by 1.6 per cent, while the Malay vote proportion will fall from 31.4 per cent to 18.1 per cent.

"When we examine these figures, we can clearly see the only reason why the EC made these changes in Syor 2 were for political reasons which is to help Umno in these seats,” he claimed.

On Monday, polls reform group Bersih 2.0 said its preliminary analysis showed that the EC has reversed most of their proposed changes in its first notice for Selangor's redelineation, but alleged that the EC has failed to correct the existing problems of malapportionment and gerrymandering.

Bersih 2.0 highlighted examples of malapportionment in the EC's second notice, such as the state seat of N29 Seri Serdang with the largest electoral roll at 74,563 voters having five times more voters than the N01 Sungai Air Tawar seat which has the smallest pool at 15,033 voters.

Bersih also cited the P109 Kapar parliamentary seat which with 146,317 voters will have four times more voters than P092 Sabak Bernam which has 37,126 seats.