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Monday, January 12, 2015

A ludicrous argument by a Sarawak assemblyman – Rama Ramanathan



The principle of “one person, one vote, one value” was bandied around in the Sarawak State Assembly in November 2014 during the debate of the bill to increase the number of seats in the assembly by eleven.
Politicians like BN assemblyman Annuar Rapaee know how to mislead and obscure. During the debate he offered one of the most ludicrous arguments I’ve ever heard.
He spoke in Malay. In the interest of brevity and to focus on only one aspect of his silliness, I’ve omitted some of his errors in this paraphrase:
Rapaee is right. In 1963, Sarawak was given a disproportionately large number of seats in the federal parliament.
But Rapaee was silent about the reason why the equal value principle was moderated in 1963. I'll ask and answer the obvious questions.
Why was Sarawak given a large number of seats in parliament? Why is the large number of seats for Sarawak so entrenched in the Federal Constitution?
Despite the failure to teach political history in our schools, and despite a slew of self-serving MPs from Sarawak, we know Sarawak, like Sabah is different from say Johor or Selangor.
Malaysia was created as a federation with 4 partners: Malaya (the peninsula), Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak.
Malaya wooed Sarawak into the federation by offering Sarawak MPs a bigger voice in parliament. This was done in order to reduce the voice of Singapore. Singapore accepted because Singapore also got special deals, but I’ll not go into that here.
An “18-point agreement” was inked. This agreement guaranteed many differences between Sarawak and the other partners. For example, despite its massive land area, Sarawak’s head of state never gets to be agong, Sarawak can deny entry to non Sarawakians, official Islam in Sarawak is more nuanced, etc.
The large number of parliamentary seats granted to Sarawak was a one-time trade: Sarawak had to give up some rights in order to enjoy the grant.
The results of the trade are easy to see, but I’ll not go into that here. My point is that the principle of equal representation in parliament was moderated by negotiation. The result was a guarantee of differences between Sarawak and the peninsula.
Guarantees are important. Guarantees should be clearly spelt out. Guarantees should be honoured.
I’ve touched on the history only in order to show that Annuar Rapaee’s claim that Sarawakians should be wary of the equal value principle is ludicrous.
The equal value principle is what guarantees that “similar” constituencies are similarly represented. Also, a sign of good government is the equalisation of constituencies.
Guarantees are important. Guarantees should be clearly spelt out. Guarantees should be honoured.
If the government has accomplished balanced development, every delineation exercise will show this. Every delineation exercise will showcase the results of balanced development. Every delineation exercise will result in more constituencies whose count of voters is closer to the average.
One of the signs of balanced development is approximately equal sized constituencies within a state. To argue against equal size is silly. To base the argument on the number of seats Sarawak has in parliament is ridiculous. To argue for grossly unequal sizes of constituencies 51 years after the federation was formed is ludicrous.
* Rama Ramanathan blogs at http://write2rest.blogspot.com/

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