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By Nur Ashikin Louis
KUCHING, June 12: The quest for one-third of parliamentary seat composition for Sarawak and Sabah in the Dewan Rakyat as enshrined under the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) cannot be done in one redelineation exercise, says Dato Sri Alexander Nanta Linggi.
The Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) secretary-general said this was mainly due to the principles of the redelineation exercise, which revolve around the number of voters.
He explained that if the redelineation exercise is conducted purely based on population, big cities like Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Johor would have more seats despite Sarawak being physically and geographically bigger.
“The weightage for vast areas and difficult topography conditions are always considered, but still, there must be a principle of not too much of a gap between the value of the vote,” he said during an exclusive interview with DayakDaily last Friday (June 9).
Nanta shared that while both Malaysia and the United Kingdom (UK) use the ‘first-past-the-post’ system, Malaysia cannot blindly follow UK’s electoral system as the latter’s Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 saw the reduction of seats in the House of Commons from 650 to 600 for the 2015 general parliamentary elections in an effort to uphold the principle of ‘one person, one vote, one value’.
The UK’s law generally (with minor exceptions) provides that each parliamentary constituency cannot be larger than 13,000 km² and that the number of voters in each constituency must be within 5 per cent of the electoral quota.
“That is why to ensure the equal value of the vote, the UK combined the rural areas to make up the numbers to be more or less equal to the densely populated area.
“If we (Sarawak) were to do that, instead of achieving two-thirds, we would end up having lesser seats,” he added.
In the context of Malaysia, Nanta noted that some would describe it as unfair when comparing a constituency like Kapit (Sarawak), which covers 45,000 voters, to Kapar (Selangor), with over 100,000. However, due to Kapit being a big area and difficult to service, it was given weightage.
He also gave another example of weightage whereas Sibu, which is easy to look after, has 100,000 voters, compared to some rural areas with 30,000 voters, which need about two or three days to get around.
“However, what about the people’s problems? Dealing with 100,000 voters and 20,000 voters is not the same, so we must also consider this factor. Thus, we have always come to a compromise in the past years.
“Going forward, we will still stick to that understanding, but we (Sarawak) cannot stop densely populated area in Malaya from splitting up. They also need to split up to provide better service to the rakyat, to be fair.
“But here (Sabah and Sarawak), we need to close the gap and get closer to slightly more than one-third of the number of parliamentary seats in Dewan Rakyat.
“We may not be able to achieve that in one shot or in one exercise, (but it is possible) maybe after two or three exercises. However, there must be definite progress towards that,” he elaborated.
During the formation of Malaysia, the distribution of parliamentary seats was that Sabah, Sarawak, and Singapore made up slightly more than one-third, while Malaya had less than two-thirds.
This was to make sure that Malaya could not make use of its number of seats to make decisions without the consensus of Sabah, Sarawak, and Singapore.
However, following Singapore’s exit and amendments that affected the Constitution, the seats were mostly taken by Malaya.
Today, out of the total 222 seats in Parliament, Sarawak only has 31 while Sabah has 25, and when combined, 56 total seats of both Borneon States are lower than one-third or 74 seats. — DayakDaily
