Have you heard of Catch 22?

The problem is we are in a Catch 22 situation. We need a two-thirds majority in Parliament to be able to change the system. But the system will not allow us to get this two-thirds majority in Parliament. This is the Catch 22 situation I am talking about. So how do you win the elections? More importantly, how do you win with a two-thirds majority so that you can change the system when the system itself does not allow you to win two-thirds?

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Today I want to talk about what Wan Saiful Wan Jan said in The Malaysian Insider news report below. Who is Wan Saiful? Well, this is what Wikipedia has to say about him: 

Wan Saiful lived in the United Kingdom between August 1993 and October 2009. He worked for several organisations there, including the Commonwealth Policy Studies Unit think tank, the British Conservative Party’s Research Department, and Social Enterprise London. From 2007 to 2009, he was vice chair of Luton Conservative Association and Head of Policy for the Conservative Muslim Forum. In May 2007, he contested in the English local elections as a Conservative Party candidate.

While in the United Kingdom, Wan Saiful was very actively involved in the PAS-linked organisation, Al-Hizbul Islami or HIZBI. He was Secretary General in 1997, President in 2000-04, and Mursyid in 2004-2006. The post of Mursyid, or chair of the Syura Council, is the highest position in the organisation. The organisation, however, forced him to resign from the post of Mursyid after he joined the Conservative Party in 2005, arguing that such an action is against PAS' policies.

The last meeting he chaired as Mursyid was on 8 April 2006, at Bewley Hotel, Manchester. It was in that meeting that the subsequent Mursyid of the organisation proposed that Wan Saiful must resign, and suggested that joining a British party is unIslamic. Wan Saiful, however, remains a life-member of PAS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wan_Saiful_Wan_Jan

I personally know Wan Saiful, whom I first met in London. He is a young man, born in 1975 (so he is two years younger than my daughter, Raja Suraya). Therefore I am in a way a ‘Pak Chik’ to him (going by ‘Malay culture’).

In 1975, the year that Wan Saiful was born, I had just ‘migrated’ to Terengganu and soon after that got ‘exposed’ to politics, Islamic politics in particular (since I lived in a PAS neighbourhood and had neighbours such as Mustaffa Ali and Harun Jusoh, plus the then Mufti of Terengganu).

In 1975, the year that Wan Saiful was born, we already knew that Malaysian elections are neither free nor fair. They are not free because they cost a lot of money (at least RM1.5 billion or so, which is what Barisan Nasional spends in a general election) and not fair because Malaysia uses the British Westminster system of Parliament where gerrymandering helps you win in a first-past-the-past race.

Hence the adage that the majority rules is not true at all. It is the minority that rules. And that is why Hitler came to power with only about 30% of the votes -- and then took the world into a world war that took tens of millions of lives (20 million in the Siege of Leningrad alone).

So what is free and fair about an election system where those with the most amount of money and with the absolute power to gerrymander wins?

And that was why in the late 1970s, soon after Wan Saiful was born, we opposed the current system and wanted a different system of choosing our government. Of course, at that time I was ‘swept’ by the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and thought that an Islamic revolution was the best way to go, as opposed to the kafirsystem that Malaysia uses.

I have since changed my mind about that, though, after seeing what happened in Iran, but in 1982 I did join the Iranians in the largest demonstration ever organised in Mekah. They organised a second one the following year, which ended in bloodshed and the deaths of many people (the actual numbers never revealed).

Wan Saiful talks as if he has just discovered a secret. “These issues conspired against non-BN parties, therefore creating a very uneven field. Due to these reasons, we conclude that GE13 was only partially free and not fair,” said Wan Saiful. And that is the ‘secret’ he is sharing with us.

As I said, we knew this ‘secret’ the year that Wan Saiful was born. And, as I wrote in my earlier articles over the last two days, we were screaming about this back in 1999, soon after the 10th General Election -- four general elections ago. And we said we need both political as well as electoral reforms. And that was why we planned Bersih back in 2007. And that is also why I am upset that Bersih was hijacked by the political parties.

We know what is wrong with the system. We already knew what is wrong with the system the year you were born. And 13-14 years ago we already tried to fight the system and get it changed.

The problem is we are in a Catch 22 situation. We need a two-thirds majority in Parliament to be able to change the system. But the system will not allow us to get this two-thirds majority in Parliament. This is the Catch 22 situation I am talking about.

So don’t tell us about what is wrong with the system. We know what is wrong with the system. We already knew what is wrong with the system the year you were born. What we need to know is what can we do about it?

You need a two-thirds majority in Parliament to increase the number of seats. But you do not need a two-thirds majority in Parliament to redraw the electoral boundaries (meaning gerrymandering), which can be done every ten years.

So how do you win the elections? More importantly, how do you win with a two-thirds majority so that you can change the system when the system itself does not allow you to win two-thirds?

Catch 22!

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GE13 ‘partially free but not fair’, say think tanks

(The Malaysian Insider) - Non-Barisan Nasional (BN) parties played on a very uneven field for Election 2013, said think tanks Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) and the Centre for Public Policy Studies (CPPS) today.

The uneven playing field was caused by issues such as a media with a heavy bias towards BN, the use of government facilities during campaigning and doubts over the Election Commission’s (EC) impartiality — all of which are seen to have benefited BN in the polls.

“Although the official campaign period and electoral processes may have proceeded smoothly and without major issues, wider issues that are not within the EC’s purview have built up over the last few years,” said the think-tanks’ joint report ‘Was GE13 Free and Fair?’ today.

“These issues conspired against non-BN parties, therefore creating a very uneven field. Due to these reasons, we conclude that GE13 was only partially free and not fair.”

While presenting their report here today, both think tanks agreed to recognise the result of the polls, saying the EC ran the polls according to the proper procedures and by the book.

“To me, I think the result is credible the way it is now because we followed the process; it is simply just not a fair election.

“It is the best result we can get, bearing in mind the challenges that we’re facing,” said Wan Saiful Wan Jan, the chief executive officer of IDEAS.

IDEAS and CPPS were partly-funded by the EC as observers, and the team sent 311 short-term observers to 99 out of 165 parliamentary constituencies in peninsula Malaysia. The report, however, encompasses the whole electoral process across Malaysia.

During their observation, they have found out that the integrity of the electoral roll was questionable, the Registrar of Societies (RoS) was not free from partisan interference, and funding of political parties was not transparent. 

The team also discovered that despite the sizeable participation of ethnic minorities in the polls, manipulation of racial issues was widespread, including the increase of racial rhetoric that sometimes bordered on the incitement of racial hatred.

The biggest issue concerning the team was the unequal delineation of constituencies, which they feel should be fixed as soon as possible now that the polls are over. 

In the report, several recommendations have been made towards the EC, including making its members explicitly accountable to a permanent and bipartisan special parliamentary committee. Its members should also be recruited from experts of the field, instead of being seconded from the civil service

To improve the electoral roll, the team suggested that the EC co-operate with more specialist groups who have undertaken in-depth studies about the roll. 

The report by IDEAS and CPPS will be available on both organisations’ websites starting today.

In Sunday’s elections, BN won 133 out of 222 federal seats, short of a two-thirds majority and worse than in the previous polls.

It also lost the popular votes to Pakatan Rakyat (PR) parties, and was bested on the popularity front for the first time since 1969, when it had contested as the Alliance Party.