THE Election Commission (EC) has failed to reduce the disparity in the number of voters in parliamentary and state seats in its Second Notice (Stor 2) on the Selangor redelineation exercise issued yesterday, said Dr Ong Kian Ming.

The Serdang MP cited as an example the Kapar parliamentary seat, which has 146,317 voters – nearly four times as many as those in the Sabak Bernam parliamentary seat (37,126).

“It would be hard for an independent and impartial EC to argue for a ‘rural weightage’ of nearly four to one for a developed state like Selangor, where even areas like Sabak Bernam and Tanjong Karang are well connected by roads and highways,” he said in a statement today.

He said the commission also failed to reduce the discrepancy in the number of voters between state seats, even for those located in a similar area.

“For example, the number of voters in Seri Serdang and Kinrara, in Syor 2, are 74,563 and 34,910, respectively, even though both state seats are under the urban (parliamentary) seat of P103 Puchong, and are under the jurisdiction of the Subang Jaya Municipal Council.

“The fact that Seri Serdang has more than twice the number of voters in Kinrara, even though they are both urban seats, is a gross violation of Section 2(c) of the 13th Schedule of the federal constitution.”

He said this could also be seen in the parliamentary seat of P106 Petaling Jaya Utara, where the two state seats under it – Damansara Utama and Kampung Tunku – had 53,440 and 31,016 voters, respectively, although both were under the Petaling Jaya Municipal Council.

Ong said the EC should increase the number of state and parliamentary seats to reduce the discrepancy in the number of voters between seats, which was in accordance with Section 2(C) of the federal constitution.

Section 2(C) states that the number of voters within each constituency in a state ought to be approximately equal, with some measure of urban-rural weightage.

Ong said it was the responsibility of the prime minister to ensure Selangor made amendments to cater to an increasing number of seats, as well as to get support in Parliament for such amendments to take place.

“The prime minister must convince two-thirds of MPs in Parliament that the redelineation exercise is worthy of their support, in order to amend the federal constitution and increase the number of parliamentary seats.

“Similarly, the prime minister must work with and obtain the agreement of Selangor to increase the number of state seats.” – January 16, 2018.