Gerrymandering isn't racial, that's just the mask

 

YOURSAY | “The real goal is to keep Malaysians intellectually weak and politically obedient.”

Don't 'punish' voters: MP urges EC to fix unequal parliamentary seat sizes

Coward: Pulai MP Suhaizan Kaiat said urban voters shouldn’t be “punished” due to the imbalance in voter distribution across parliamentary constituencies.

Punish? In the Malaysian context, this is called discrimination. As with all gerrymandering, it is designed to entrench the incumbent’s power by manipulating Parliament.

In Malaysia, it comes with a racist face designed to ensure minorities do not get a proportionate voice. This is built on the groundless fear of losing to non‑Malay voters when more seats will be created in Malay‑majority areas.

Peel away this racist façade and you will see that the real reason is to suppress intellectual progress, particularly among Malay‑Muslim voters whose growing awareness threatens the political elite’s grip on power.

Urban communities tend to have more progressive views, and that threatens incumbents who have not, or refuse to change with the times.

For example, areas like Damansara should be split. It is simply too large. However, I am not sure we can combine Marang with other constituencies. It is not just a question of voter numbers but also the MP’s ability to serve them effectively.

I believe a larger Marang will not achieve your aim of displacing the incumbent. Neither am I using the incumbent’s physical frailty to argue that the constituency cannot be enlarged.

It is about the principle of fairness. We must consider advancements in communication and transportation, which make it possible to combine smaller constituencies into larger ones.

At the same time, we must ensure rural voices are not drowned out by urban populations.

Hoyo Hoyo: Suhaizan, electoral boundaries have been purposely flawed for decades. It gives more electoral weight to rural voters than to urban voters.

A densely populated and a low-populated constituency has one MP each. That's outright malapportionment to suppress the non-Malays votes in Bolehland.

Gerrymandering is another injustice to the urban voters. The Election Commission (EC) can create new seats or redraw existing seats to favour the government over the opposition.

They pack opponent votes into the usual opposition seats. It enables opposition winning large majorities in opposition seats without gaining in the newly created seats. This ensures political power remains with the Malays.

However, the demographics and political power have changed. The oppositions are not the non-Malays.

With Undi18 and population movements, the Malays are the urban majority today. Gerrymandering their votes is impossible.

Nevertheless, the EC should combine the low-populated rural constituencies into a bigger one. It helps to reduce the number of PAS MPs in Parliament.

Ayam Kambing Back: Suhaizan, well said. All rakyat must rise above this matter and ensure that the EC carries out redelineation according to the principle of fair and equal representation of voters and adopts the new constituencies in the 16th general elections.

DAP must pay attention and not let this slip again. Demand the deputy chairperson position in the EC. Do not let Umno/PKR take everything because they will not ensure fairness and equality.

This is the mother of all reforms. The rakyat, particularly the urban population, must make sure it's done accordingly.

The population in the largest constituency must not be more than double that of the smallest constituency. All small constituencies should be combined into one larger constituency.

With the ease and norm of mobile internet, there's no more excuse for not combining them.

Hmmm: The number of constituents should carry far more weight than the physical size of a constituency. After all, MPs are supposed to represent people, not land.

If a constituency is the size of Selangor but has only 100 voters, should it have the same number of seats as Selangor?

Should an MP representing 10,000 voters have equal voting power to an MP representing 200,000 voters? Something is very wrong with our electoral system, and it must be corrected.

Otherwise, the will of the people can never be truly represented in Parliament.

UB40: This is how BN won so many elections. How can one parliamentary seat with 40,000 voters, mostly Chinese, be equal to another with 4,000 voters dominated by Malays?

The EC must introduce a standard formula based on proportional representation, regardless of who dominates the area.

I guess Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is learning well; you cannot blame him as he is an ex‑Umno leader and will use this to his benefit.

The EC is also not independent, as its leadership reports to the prime minister.

GP2025: The urban voters are a concentration of the Chinese community. They are spread thinly over most of the constituencies.

A new urban community represents the Malays who are distributed more or less on an average over constituencies.

One urban constituency may be equivalent to 20-30 rural communities.

EC needs to delineate according to a formula that is a fair representation of the various ethnic populations.

Meerkat: We were hopeful that gerrymandering would end after Pakatan Harapan won. However, the government was too afraid to act and eventually imploded.

Now, we do not see how this process will take place.

One reason for not acting when it had the chance was fear of backlash from rural voters. This itself is an admission that the EC is not independent.

Perhaps the government should reform the EC now. Then, hopefully, fairer redelineation can take place later. - Mkini