FEBRUARY 27 ― If you understand the “mystery” of electoral redelineation, then it won't be so hard for you to understand that why the issue has been dragged on four four years, and is still in an impasse.
According to the Federal Constitution, the borders of parliamentary and state constituencies have to be redrawn every eight years. The last time this was done was in 2003 and by right it should have been done again in 2011. However, as the BN did not have the two-thirds advantage in the Parliament, the redelineation exercise had to be put on hold until now.
Unless the Federal Constitution is amended, the redelineation of constituencies need the support of at least two thirds of MPs.
Of the 222 seats in the Parliament now, BN only has 133 seats, 15 short of the two thirds majority. In other words, unless the motion receives the approval of some opposition MPs, the redelineation draft will never be adopted in the Dewan Rakyat.
If the redelineation draft cannot be passed this time, the EC will have to wait for another eight years to relaunch the redelineation works as specified by the Federal Constitution.
A general election has to be called latest by 2018, which is three years from now. If both the ruling and opposition camps cannot reach some kind of compromise on constituency redelineation, things will remain very much the same in 2018 as now, i.e. 222 parliamentary seats.
Based on the outcome of 13th general elections, if the electoral borders are not redrawn, BN will continue to have an edge. Even though Pakatan managed to clinch 5.62 million votes or 50.83 per cent of the total, ahead of BN's 5.23 million votes or 47.42 per cent, BN was returned with 133 parliamentary seats it won. Apparently BN won the elections on such an advantage.
Pakatan failed to unseat the BN at federal level because of the rule of the game. Other than reforming the electoral system, the electoral constituencies must also be redrawn in a fairer manner. That said, Pakatan has little faith in the EC and will be unlikely to vote in favor of the draft.
EC chairman Abdul Aziz has said the EC would not side any political party when redrawing the borders. However, favouring the ruling parties has been a common phenomenon when election commissions worldwide are redrawing the borders of electoral constituencies. If is evident that such discrepancies do exist in this country.
There have been constitutional provisions stating that the number of voters in a constituency must not exceed the mean value by a certain percentage. In 1955, it was 33 per cent, lowered to 15 per cent in 1957 but later reverted to 33 per cent in 1962. In 1973, the Parliament even adopted a motion to amend the Constitution to completely abolish the upper ceiling deviation.
In this country, we have parliamentary seats making up of more than 100,000 constituents and those that have slightly more than 10,000. Unless the EC could pledge impartiality, no one would trust the EC's promises of fairer redelineation.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.
