THE Sarawak ruling coalition today made it clear that the proposed electoral reform must include allotting more than one-third of seats in the Dewan Rakyat to Sabah and Sarawak.

Gabungan Parti Sarawak, at its first supreme council meeting of the year, said the seat allocation should revert to the agreed pre-Malaysia arrangement which aim was to prevent Malaya from unilaterally amending the federal constitution.

Chief Minister Abang Johari Openg said reversion to the pre-Malaysia arrangement would lend credence to the “doctrine of wilayah (regions)”.

“Two-thirds must not be (concentrated) in one area only,” Abang Johari said, alluding to the current distribution of seats which places the majority of them in the peninsula.

“If they want to amend the constitution they must get support from Sabah and Sarawak.”

Abang Johari, who is president of Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB), the lead party in GPS, said the coalition want more seats to be a part of the reforms.

In the pre-Malaysia arrangement, Sarawak, Sabah and Singapore were accorded one-third of the seats in parliament.

When Singapore left the federation in 1965, its seats went to Malaya.

Sarawak with 31 seats and Sabah with 25, are 18 seats shy of one-third of the 222-seat Dewan Rakyat.

The first parliament of Federation of Malaysia in 1963 had 159 members, of which 104 were in Malaya, 15 Singapore, 16 Sabah and 24 Sarawak.

The total MPs in Singapore, Sarawak and Sabah then made up 34.6% of parliament.

Abang Johari said the peninsula’s allotment of more than two-thirds of seats meant that “they could amend the constitution without consulting Sabah and Sarawak “.

He said Sarawak had consulted Sabah on the matter and Sabah had agreed to it.

The ERC chaired by former Election Commission chairman Rashid Abdul Rahman, was set up by the government in August 2018.

Its 20 members were given two years to study electoral reform and present their recommendations to the cabinet.

The recommendations are due this year. – The Malaysian Insight file pic, February 6, 2020.