BERSIH 2.0 has called for major changes to Malaysia’s electoral system, including doing away with the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system, following the high court’s dismissal of the Selangor government’s bid to challenge a boundary redelineation exercise.

The electoral reform coalition said the FPTP system had allowed malapportionment and gerrymandering to take place and these would only get worse, now that the courts had freed the EC from constitutional constraints.

“Seat increases will inevitably be exploited by any government with a two-third majority if their power is threatened.

“The country will slip into greater instability if elections keep producing minority government in term of votes, as in the last poll, where the ruling coalition wins 60% of parliamentary seats with only 47% of votes,” Bersih said in a statement.

A government is formed in the FPTP or winner-takes-all system when it wins the majority of seats.

Critics and the opposition, however, have said the system is unfair in Malaysia due to malapportionment and gerrymandering where the federal government is formed even if it wins less of the popular vote.

“(This) can be can be best stopped when the seats won by parties are determined by how many votes they get, not where they get the votes,” Bersih added, noting that Germany and New Zealand use the list or mixed member proportional system where voters choose a constituency representative as well as a party.

The party is assigned a number of seats in parliament based on the percentage of votes it obtains.

“Bersih urges all pro-democracy parties to seriously study the desirability and feasibility of a switch from FPTP to MMP after GE14,” it said.

It also urged the federal opposition-led Selangor government to implement non-constituency seats (NCS) before GE14 whereby such seats will be allocated to parties based on their vote share.

“It is constitutionally possible for the states especially Selangor, Penang and Kelantan to introduce NCS as an interim measure. This would give us an electoral system that is much fairer and more inclusive than FPTP,” Bersih added.

Bersih also called recent court decisions on Selangor’s attempts to challenge the EC’s redelineation exercise a “tragic episode” and a wake-up call that Malaysia’s electoral system cannot be fixed unless independence and integrity is restored to the EC and judiciary.

It said the decisions of the Court of Appeal, Federal Court and certain high court judges in various delineation suits have revealed that the courts will resort to either saying that suits were premature if the EC had not submitted its final proposal to the prime minister, or that suits were academic if the EC had already done so.

“This is effectively saying that the EC can act in disregard and violation of the Federal Constitution (provisions) in delineating constituencies, beyond query, check and balance by the judiciary; and if the Parliament chooses to not reject the EC’s proposal, then nothing proposed by the EC in constituency delineation can be considered unconstitutional and held back.”

Bersih said that if nothing was done about the electoral system, the resumed constituency delineation exercise will likely result in not only the distortion, but even the denial of the Selangor electorate if GE14 is held using the new constituency boundaries. – December 7, 2017.