In the aftermath of May 5th (part 8)

Hence the percentage in votes has never matched the percentage in seats. This has always been the case since Merdeka and is called gerrymandering, perfectly legal all over the world unless that particular country passes a law where the variance between seats must be within plus-minus 10% or 15% (something I have been talking about since 1999).

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Anwar vows never to surrender until GE13 results validated

(The Malaysian Insider) - Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim vowed last night never to surrender Pakatan Rakyat’s (PR) fight to ensure the pact claims its rightful place in Putrajaya, maintaining his stance that Barisan Nasional (BN) had cheated its way to victory on May 5.

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I followed the rally in Ipoh last night (on live streaming) and would like to touch on what Dr. Lee Boon Chye and Anwar Ibrahim said in that rally.

Dr Lee lamented that he won with a majority of only 15,000 votes while if there had not been any cheating he would have won with a majority of 30,000 instead. Anwar, on the other hand, said since Pakatan Rakyat won with more than 51% of the popular votes this proves that Barisan Nasional lost the election. Furthermore, he had known as early as 7.00pm (even as the votes were still being counted) that Pakatan Rakyat had won.

Okay, I would like to talk about three very crucial issues here, two of those issues that I have been talking about for a very long time since 1999. And the first issue is about gerrymandering or the fallacy of popular votes while the second issue is about crowds.

On Sunday, 5th May 2013, Barisan Nasional won less than 50% of the popular votes and yet it still won almost 60% of the seats in Parliament. Hence this is the evidence of fraud, said Anwar, because it is impossible to win less than 50% of the popular votes and still win the election.

Well, in that case, look at the following results of the last 12 general elections from 1959 to 2008 and tell me: is it impossible?

Even in the worse election for the ruling party, 1969, they won less than 50% of the votes but yet were only 0.7% short of getting a two-thirds majority in Parliament. One more seat and the Alliance Party would have controlled two-thirds of Parliament.

Hence the percentage in votes has never matched the percentage in seats. This has always been the case since Merdeka and is called gerrymandering, perfectly legal all over the world unless that particular country passes a law where the variance between seats must be within plus-minus 10% or 15% (something I have been talking about since 1999).

So, how can Anwar say Pakatan Rakyat won the election since it won more than 51% of the seats? I have warned Pakatan Rakyat that Barisan Nasional can win 45% of the popular votes and still form the government with a simple majority and that if Pakatan Rakyat wants to take over it needs to win about 60% of the popular votes (based on the current system).

The next point I have always talked about, and which was the basis of my Harakah article back in March 2000 regarding the Sanggang by-election (the article was called ‘Crowds do NOT translate to votes’) is that, well, crowds do not translate to votes.

For the first time in Malaysian history, there was a huge crowd in the usually ‘sleepy’ town of Sanggang and the traffic jam into town was five kilometres long. Judging by the crowd alone, PAS had definitely won that by-election. When the votes were counted, however, Umno won 6,743 votes against Hishamuddin Yahya of PAS’s 4,780 votes.

Hishamuddin Yahya, the Managing Director of Harakah, published my article because, according to what he told me, he agreed with what I said and felt that the opposition should seriously take note of this very important point.

But they did not. In January 2002, there were large crowds at the opposition rallies during the Indera Kayangan by-election. I had to park my car three kilometres from the ceramah and walk the rest of the way because of the massive jam. The crowd was at least 50,000 or more.

Earlier, I drove pass Menteri Besar Shahidan Kassim’s residence and saw less than 100 people there. No way MCA was going to win. Cikgu Khoo from PKR was definitely going to win and PKR forecasted a majority of at least 2,500 votes. When the votes were counted, it was indeed a majority of 2,500 votes but in favour of MCA, not PKR.

That is the reality but the opposition never listens and still thinks that crowds of 50,000 or 100,000 at theirceramah means they are going to win the election. This has never been the case and it is time that the opposition wise up to this reality. You need to win seats, not crowds at your ceramah, to win the election.

I shall continue this ‘story’ in the next episode because Malaysia Today readers get very upset when my articles run into more than two pages.

TO BE CONTINUED