By now over 2/3 population of Malaysia is living in urban areas -but 2/3 of the parliament seats are located in rural areas with only 1/3 population. That is the reality of mal-apportionment in the constituencies in Malaysia-even though the Election Commission keep insisting that all these has been done without violating any laws. What that means is either the laws that permit this skewed re-delineation is unfair, or that the EC is lying! Opposition is stronger in urban areas while BN in rural areas. The former values good governance issues eg anti-corruption, anti-cronyism, good environment, good public transports and housing etc. The latter prefer development goodies eg building roads, schools, temples etc. This situation will become worse as time pass by: by 2020 3/4 of the population and voters would be residing in towns and yet they still only share 1/3 of the seats in Parliament-that is if the BN and its EC is still around!
The BN has been proclaiming that the election system is fair-now also supported by Dr Chandra Muzzafar, despite the accumulation of evidences that point otherwise. This is a defect in democracy: when a ruling party insist on keeping handicap to itself by amending the laws to remove check and balance the Opposition and the people are left with no institutional methods to demand for changes/improvement. Thus an unfair system keep returning the same party, and the same party keep refusing to return the laws to fair pattern-which lead to the same party perpetuating itself in the Parliament. When there is no institutional method to address a weakness the people are entitled to take the issue to the public and hope to influence the election results in a way which allow the improvement to the election laws to happen. Yet the 2008 election results -after the 1st bersih rally, which show people’s disgust at the unfair election system did not make the BN accept the people’s verdict-no improvement of the election system was conceded thus far. Even after the 2nd Bersih we find the BN still insisting on keeping huge handicap to itself!
So they deserve to be given a hard knock on their head as far as election result is concern so that they may wake up after they lost all! The only adjustment that the Opposition need to make is to target the rural areas where the seats are disproportionately represented. Only by following the rules of the game that the Opposition and the people can see fairer elections returning to Malaysia!
When the EC insist that changes in election operation can only happen with BN’s approval they are giving away any pretense of neutrality that come with their mandate as an election administrator. In fact it comes with any referee job-even for a football game. The referee can never be captured by any side of the contest. Yet this is the sad reality that happened in this country. Yet this has not been the case all along: the 1st Election Commission Chief refused to implement re-delineation to favour UMNO as requested by Tunku Abdul Rahman. He choosed to resign. We need more people with integrity like Datuk Dr Mustafa Albakri Hassan, to defend the democracy that started off not too bad at independence time!
How do you know that 2/3 of parliamentary seats are in rural areas? Got such data meh?