Sunway University political scientist Wong Chin Huat has penned an open letter urging Selangor Menteri Besar Amirudin Shari to implement electoral reforms at the state level, a day after making a similar appeal to Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow.
In his letter, Wong argued that the winner-takes-all nature of Malaysia’s first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system has put the country’s Malay electorate in a bind.
Coining the term “Malay Dilemma 2.0”, Wong said Malay voters face a choice between one-party rule, which can enable abuses of power that harm the Malay interests it is supposed to protect, and multi-party competition, which carries the risk of the system being captured by opponents of Malay dominance.
To address this, he proposed creating nine appointed assembly seats. Unlike in some states, where such appointments are at the discretion of the chief minister or menteri besar, Wong’s proposed system would allocate the seats according to each party or coalition’s statewide popular vote, based on lists of candidates submitted by them.
“Democratically appointed non-constituency seats (Dancs) would address one fundamental flaw in FPTP: the defeated parties in individual constituencies would not get absolutely nothing; they could pool their votes statewide and win some Dancs seats.
“This reduces both the fear of Malay nationalist voters that they would have no representation for splitting their votes, and the incentives of Malay nationalist parties to enter painful seat allocation just to get some seats,” he said.
A shorter version of the open letter in Malay was published by Utusan Malaysia today.
Wong made a similar appeal to Chow yesterday in a letter published by Chinese-language daily Kwong Wah Yit Poh.
He said Amirudin and Chow are the only two people in a position to introduce the reform.
However, Amirudin’s Pakatan Harapan coalition does not control the two-thirds majority needed to amend the Selangor state constitution. Support from the opposition will be necessary - and opposition leader Azmin Ali may be inclined to support this initiative because his party Bersatu stands to benefit from it.
Wong’s open letter is reproduced in full below:
MB Amirudin, Change Electoral System to End Malay Dilemma 2.0
Dear Dato Seri Amirudin Shari,
You are right that Negeri Sembilan was won on identity politics. Your colleague is also right that PKR must address Malay anxieties.
However, if PKR thinks it can match PAS and Umno in nationalist narratives, it will only appear as a counterfeit to the Malay-Muslim nationalist voters while further alienating the liberal and minority voters.
Narrow nationalism must be answered with inclusiveness in Islam as a true alternative that can compete for the Islamist minds and also assure other Malaysians.
More fundamentally, the institutional sources of Malay anxieties must be addressed: our majoritarian political system, which concentrates power in the hands of whoever wins Putrajaya, through executive dominance over Parliament, centralised federalism and the first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system.
Up until 2004, this system had allowed BN to win 70-90 percent of parliamentary seats with 50-60 percent of votes.
It simply amplified the Malays’ political power, so that all accommodations, whether of ethnic minorities, of Borneo and the Malayan states, BN component parties or the opposition, were made on Umno’s terms.
Malay Dilemma 2.0
The system, however, also creates a Malay Dilemma 2.0, one that had not yet appeared when former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad wrote his magnum opus “The Malay Dilemma”. Entrenched with political, economic, and social powers, the Malays live in constant tensions between two threats.
On one hand, one-party predominance enables and encourages power abuse and corruption that turn against the Malays that it is supposed to protect, as the Malay proverb goes, “harapkan pegar, pegar makan padi” (Counting on the pheasant to protect paddy from pests, the pheasant feasts on paddy).
On the other hand, multiparty competition carries the risk that the winner-takes-all system may be captured by the opponents of Malay dominance, triggering the fear that the New Economic Policy (NEP), bumiputera-ism, Islamisation, and the supremacy of the Malay language might be overturned overnight.
The Malay electorate has been caught in this tug of war between the two threats. Only twice, the rejection of one-party dominance triumphed over the fear of losing power to the minorities - in 1998, when Mahathir sent Anwar Ibrahim to jail and started Reformasi; and in 2018, when Mahathir lent Pakatan Harapan the Malay-nationalist assurance to oust Umno.
All the other times, the fear of “the others” won - 1990, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah’s defeat because of his Kadazan sigar headgear with a cross-like pattern; 2013, Najib Abdul Razak’s narrow victory thanks to a small swing of Malay votes fearing Pakatan Rakyat coming into power; 2020, the Sheraton Move to create a Malay unity government.
The new Blue-Green wave from Johor to Negeri Sembilan and soon to the whole country is but the latest manifestation of the Malays’ existential fear of being dominated by the outsiders.
This fear has caused the Malays to endure or overlook corruption that feasts on their communal institutions from Felda to Tabung Haji. It has also caused distress to other Malaysians by framing them as an impeding threat to the Malays, when all the former want is just to live their lives undisturbed.
The distress comes in different forms and shapes, sometimes as divisive comments by politicians that the non-Malays belong somewhere else other than Malaysia, sometimes as campaigns by autonomous communal activists that even selling “mee pok” can be deliberately framed as serving “pork” to drive away Malay clientele from a non-Malay-run pork-free kopitiam.
Transition to consensus democracy
There are only two ways to end the Malays’ anxiety of fearing others’ domination. The first way is returning to one-party predominance, which, however, does not escape the Malay Dilemma 2.0 discussed above, exactly because it is part of the dilemma. One-party predominance invariably results in exploitation of Malays and bitter factionalism that ends the predominance.
Malay unity between Malay nationalist parties invariably ended in backstabbing, as evidenced in the 1977 bitter break-up of Umno-PAS’ six-year cohabitation that was soon followed by the 1981 “Amanat Hadi” that cast Umno as infidels, and in the short-lived 2018-2020 Muafakat Nasional project terminated by uneven spoil-sharing.
Umno-PAS’ third collaboration would eventually come to an end even after it wins them federal power (which is almost certain).
The second way is dismantling our majoritarian political set-up and building a consensus democracy, one in which many Malay-based and Malay-led political parties can flourish and compete against each other to offer the Malays choices and checks and balances, and simultaneously can join forces to block any drastic policy and institutional changes without the consent of most Malay-Muslims.
Such a system gives the Malays the security of enjoying multiparty competition, with the veto power vested in their demographic dominance.
A transition to consensus democracy requires reforms in four dimensions. First, decentralisation to empower Borneo, the Malayan states, and local electorates. Second, parliamentary and legislative reforms to give government backbenchers and opposition lawmakers meaningful roles in lawmaking, policymaking, government scrutiny, and budgeting.
Third, rolling back executive dominance to allow impartiality in public administration, starting from the separation of the public prosecutor role from the attorney-general, to depoliticalisation of other public institutions, to mandatory equity in constituency allocation.
Fourth, most fundamentally and urgently, moving away from our outdated FPTP electoral system, which served the Malays well but has now turned out to harm their best interests.
Dato Seri, surely you can see that the identity politics you recognise in Negeri Sembilan is politically rational. If pooling BN and Perikatan Nasional votes alone could flip five state seats to their advantage, why shouldn’t they do it?
Likewise, if this can turn 28 parliamentary seats in the peninsula, why shouldn’t Umno and PAS put aside their past misgivings and join forces? The blue-green wave is exactly what the FPTP system wants, and it is happening.
Articles 116 and 117 of the Federal Constitution prevent us from changing FPTP to any system that has multiple representatives in one constituency, the necessary condition to introduce proportionality and guarantee inter-party checks-and-balances.
But the Federal Constitution has not stopped the creation of unelected statewide assemblypersons. This is how we have the appointed assemblypersons created in Sabah (1963), Terengganu (2003), Pahang (2020), Johor (May 2026), and Malacca (July 2026). They are all bonus seats for the state government, to strengthen the chief minister’s control, or to reward allies and cronies.
Except for Terengganu, which requires the appointed assemblypersons to be women or non-Muslims who can only be appointed when no woman or non-Muslim is elected, the other four states pose no requirement as to who these appointees can be.
All in all, this system of state government-appointed assemblypersons weakens the legislatures and makes our political system more majoritarian.
Democratically appointed non-constituency seats
Dato Seri, this is where you, as the Selangor menteri besar, can introduce a game changer. You can introduce appointed assemblypersons that resemble closed-list proportional representation (CLPR) seats in the mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) systems in Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, and Nepal in our region.
Let’s call them democratically appointed non-constituency seats (Dancs) because these lawmakers, who would serve the whole state and not individual constituencies, are to be appointed from across coalitions/parties based on their vote share.
Dancs would address one fundamental flaw in FPTP: the defeated parties in individual constituencies would not get absolutely nothing; they could pool their votes statewide and win some Dancs seats.
This reduces both the fear of Malay nationalist voters that they would have no representation for splitting their votes, and the incentives of Malay nationalist parties to enter painful seat allocation just to get some seats.
Introducing Dancs is no rocket science and not complicated at all. To visualise in four steps, let’s imagine nine Dancs would be created in Selangor, raising the total assembly seats from 56 to 65.
First, after nomination for the next state election closes, all coalitions/parties can nominate up to nine Dancs candidates, in a fixed order. Second, voters can cast their votes based on both the candidates in their FPTP constituency and the Dancs lists.
Third, when the dust settles, the nine Dancs seats would be allocated to the various coalitions/parties, and the coalitions/parties would fill their seats with candidates based on the order of their list.
Fourth, to allow Dancs lawmakers to serve their statewide constituents, who could be single parents, the disabled, gig workers, environmentalists, Orang Asli, and SME owners, the state legislative assembly should then set up various select committees, which are of course open to all conventional assemblypersons.
These select committees can convene hearings and site visits to bring in more voices into lawmaking and policymaking, reducing the dominance of the executive and top civil servants.
The design above is not ideal because voters cannot have separate party choice in both FPTP seats and Dancs list. Unlike the two-ballot MMM in Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, and Nepal, this is a single-ballot variant.
To have two ballots, Article 117 of the Federal Constitution needs to be amended, but that cannot happen until the public experiences and sees why CLPR is necessary to supplement FPTP.
Dato Seri, you and Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow are the only two people who can introduce this game changer to usurp communalism. Since you do not have a two-thirds majority, you would need the support of the opposition.
I am certain that Selangor legislative opposition leader Dato Seri Azmin Ali can see why this Dancs is good for the opposition, not least Bersatu.
Assuming the next state election returns exactly the distribution of votes in the 15th general election: Harapan 53 percent, PN 28 percent, and BN 17 percent, Harapan would get five out of nine seats, while PN and BN would get two each. If Bersatu can garner around 11 percent of votes, it can get one Dancs seat even if it loses in every FPTP seat.
Let’s throw in the last bit where Dancs can enhance diversity: gender inclusion. Currently Selangor has only nine women out of 56 assemblypersons, registering a pathetic percentage of 16.1 percent, just half of the international benchmark of a minimum 30 percent.
Dancs can be designed to mandate each coalition/party to place a woman at the first, third, fifth, seventh, and ninth places of their list. If Harapan, PN, and BN get five, two, and two seats respectively as in the simulation above, their Dancs delegations would have three, one, and one women correspondingly, raising the percentage of women in the enlarged state legislative assembly to 14/65, or 24.6 percent.
Dato Seri, not every politician is given the opportunity to introduce a game changer in their career. You are in that privileged position. May Allah grant you wisdom and courage. - Mkini
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