The ongoing controversy surrounding Sarawak and Sabah’s plea for one-third representation in the Malaysian Parliament persists, much to my surprise.
The proposal, long-awaited and deeply rooted in historical significance, has stirred concern among various stakeholders, including NGOs, politicians, and certain factions in Malaya.
You may wonder why this occurred. To explain, we need to look at the structure of Malaysia’s initial Parliament, which comprised 159 seats, with Sarawak, Sabah, and Singapore collectively holding 55 of these seats. Malaya had 104.
This proportion, slightly over one-third has historical basis, context and precedent.
This measure was taken to ensure that the constitutional rights of the original Malaysian states – Sarawak, Sabah, and Singapore – were not carelessly eroded.
But now, experts have been summoned to scrutinise these assertions, suggesting a potential power imbalance emerging between Malaya and Borneo.
One academician who was quoted in a report by a national Malay daily fixated on interpreting the meaning of ‘safeguard’ in the Cobbold Commission Report, North Borneo’s 20-point agreement and Sarawak’s 18-point agreement.
He interpreted that this ‘safeguard’ as mentioned no longer exists given the fact that Singapore left the federation.
In the same report, a former Parliament speaker corroborated the academician’s assertion that Sarawak and Sabah’s claims lack legal foundation.
From the Sarawak viewpoint, there seems to be an attempt to muddy the waters and distort the facts in an organised campaign to deny the claims from Malaya’s partners in the federation.
They intend to somehow ridicule this proposal given the possible ramifications of the two regions having more representation in Parliament.
The perspective of Sarawak and Sabah is evident: they must be represented in a manner that ensures amendments to the Federal Constitution cannot occur without their consent.
This ensures that any laws that are detrimental or revoke the special rights and safeguards given to Sarawak and Sabah can be blocked.
While the scenario of Malayan politicians united in their determination to undermine Sarawak and Sabah may seem unlikely, history has shown that stranger events have transpired.
Maybe, just maybe, as the political trend changes in many years to come, it could happen and we have to prepare for this eventuality where the survival of the federation is at stake.
Similarly, there are NGOs – as I mentioned in the past who have been cunning in diverting Sarawak and Sabah’s demands to better representation in Dewan Rakyat to Dewan Negara.
While Dewan Negara has its place and importance in the legislative process, our demands could not simply be written off by adding more token representation in the number of senators.
So, the question now becomes how this materialises – giving Sarawak and Sabah more seats.
It will be through a redelineation exercise where additional constituencies are carved out from existing ones. Early this year, the Election Commission (EC) confirmed that Sarawak is ripe for redelineation.
This has led NGOs to reiterate that Sarawak’s constituencies are currently “grossly malapportioned” as a result of gerrymandering, pointing out the significant imbalance in voter numbers across various regions.
That is why there is a lot of interest in having public dialogues to address these issues – malapportionment and gerrymandering.
These are the big words being thrown around. Their agenda is for everyone’s vote to count the same.
They are saying the value of a voter in Constituency A would be not the same as a voter in Constituency B as A has 70,000 voters while B and C have 30,000 and 20,000 respectively.
Their argument also extends to what if a political party wins constituency A and another party wins constituencies B and C. The latter party has more seats with fewer voters than the former.
These are first-world problems for the people in urban areas and the political parties vying to obtain support in this segment.
Of course, it has its merits and I am not saying it does not, but consider this, the whole point of this exercise – to add seats – is to address the underrepresentation and narrow the urban-rural development gap.
Theoretically, if we were to group constituents in this arbitrary 70,000-voter threshold, wouldn’t that end up with us having fewer seats, less representation and therefore less development?
The needs are not the same, the issues are not the same and by the same logic, why on earth would the solution be the same?
DISCLAIMER:
The views expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the Sarawak Tribune.
