UMNO duo against anti-fraud protesters lectured on electoral system

Home minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and Selangor Barisan Nasional deputy chairman Noh Omar, both of whom had told those unhappy with Malaysia's electoral system to leave, were today lectured on the “first-past-the-post” voting system.

Newly elected DAP member of parliament Ong Kian Ming said that while Zahid was right to say that Malaysia inherited the 'single member constituency first-past-the-post' electoral system from Britain, there were several recommendations that Ong said had been forgotten in time.

One of these was the Reid Commission's recommendation to limit to 15 percent maximum deviation limit from national average in terms of the number of voters per constituency.

“The maximum rural weightage allowed was 2 to 1 – which effectively means that the largest constituency can only have twice as many voters as the smallest constituency,” said Ong, citing how the system was violated.

He gave the example of Kapar in Selangor, with 144,369 voters, which is nine times the number of voters in Putrajaya, the smallest constituency, having 15,798 voters during the last general election.

Ong said several countries had made such a rule, including Britain which passed a law in 2011 to set the deviation limit to five percent, Australia with a limit of 10 percent and Canada at 25 percent.

In Australia, Ong said any redelineation exercise must adhere to a maximum of 3.5 percent deviation rule.

“If Australia, given its large geographic area, can follow the one-man-one-vote principle, there is no reason why Malaysia cannot follow suit,” he added.

Zahid and Noh were recently criticised over their statements urging those who do not agree with the country’s election system to migrate or move to the jungle.

In the May 5 polls, BN won rural seats and gained some twenty seats more to form the Federal government, despite losing popular votes to Pakatan Rakyat. -HD