Malapportionment of electoral districts in Malaysia

Parliamentary constituencies of Malaysia. (The Star Online)

A recent article on British daily The Guardian warned that democracy in the United Kingdom is in "terminal decline". Citing a study by research group Democratic Audit, the paper reports that unrepresentative politicians and indifferent voters are contributing to the decline of the democratic process in Britain. And these issues relate to a fundamental principle in representative democracy – the concept of one person, one vote.

Fortunately in Malaysia, voters are far from indifferent. Voter turnout has been near consistently upwards of 70% since at least 1982. However, as electoral reform advocates have pointed out before, while voters do their part by voting, the electoral system is inherently unrepresentative of the voters.

The principle of one person, one vote stems from the idea that every citizen should be represented equally in government. Each person's vote has equal weight in the process of governing. In a representative democracy such as Malaysia's, this principle supposedly manifests itself in the Dewan Rakyat, where 222 near-equal-population constituencies elect one member of parliament each. However, this is simply not the case.

In the 2008 election, Kapar (Selangor) had 112,224 eligible voters while Lawas (Sarawak) had 15,717 – nearly seven times the former – yet both constituencies delivered one representative each to the Dewan Rakyat. The extreme case was Putrajaya – 6,608 voters but surrounded by the Sepang (Selangor) constituency of 62,044 voters. Putrajaya could simply have been absorbed into Sepang, creating a 68,652-voter constituency, which was not far off Selangor’s average of 71,158 per constituency.

The Parliamentary Select Committee on Electoral Reform suggested balancing the number of seats between East and West Malaysia (if The Star's summary is accurate; I have not read the full report). This will not represent any improvement on the present situation because Peninsula Malaysia constitutes 22.6 million (more than 75%) of the total population of 28.3 million. Furthermore the committee went only as far as calling to avoid population disparities in federal constituencies within each state. Under these two recommendations, the seven-to-one vote advantage for Lawas over Kapar can still occur.

One of the most glaring deficiencies in our electoral system was simply passed off by the PSC with meek and inconsequential proposals. It is one of many glaring problems acknowledged by the PSC, but this one also strikes at the core of our democratic process. This is the clearest distortion of one person, one vote, and must not be ignored.