Malaysian 14th General Election GE14 in Numbers

Barisan Nasional (BN) (National Front) has ruled Malaysia for 61 years, the only ruling party since the country’s independence in 1957.

Until 2018. Although their support is waning (they lost two-thirds majority in 2008, lost popular vote in 2013), their stranglehold seemed impenetrable, because they’ve employed multiple tactics to ensure their continuous rule. How did the impossible happen?

Their first tactic is malapportionment. This is a variant of the more commonly known tactic, gerrymandering. In fact, malapportionment is more blatant than gerrymandering. Gerrymandering at least tries to divide the districts to approximately equal sizes. Malapportionment deliberately makes the sizes different.

The biggest parliament seat was Bangi, Selangor with 178,790 registered voters, the smallest was Igan, Sarawak with 19,592 registered voters. Bangi was 913% bigger than Igan.

But there is a special provision in the Federal Constitution Article 161E Clause (2) Paragraph (e) that Sabah and Sarawak’s representation (in proportion) in the House of Representatives (Dewan Rakyat) should be no less than their allocation to their allocation on Malaysia Day, which was 25%.

Therefore we cannot directly compare parliament seat sizes between Sabah and Sarawak’s with non-Sabah non-Sarawak seats. But even after separation, malapportionment is still significant.

The largest seat at Sabah and Sarawak was Kuching, 418% larger than the smallest seat Igan. At Peninsular states and federal seats, the ratio between biggest and smallest is 655% (Bangi to Putrajaya).

BN curiously won the smaller seats and not winning the bigger seats. They won the 9 smallest seats at Peninsular states and federal while not winning the 19 largest seats. At Sabah and Sarawak, they won 8 of the 10 smallest seats (2 went to independents, I’m curious how they campaigned and won) and losing 8 of the 9 largest seats.

Then how they still manage to lose the overall election?

One of the shortcomings of first-past-the-post system is what is known as the spoiler effect.

(First-past-the-post or FPTP is the elections system Malaysia and some other countries use, including the United States and the United Kingdom, where the land is divided and each piece of land elects a single representative by a simple election where who wins the most votes wins. The name derives from horse racing where the winner is the first past the post.)

Image credits to Broadbent Institute.

First-past-the-post will inevitably create a two-party system (two dominant parties with a lot of small parties). A third contender will draw away votes from both parties and may result in a different winner than if the third party did not contest at all.

Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) (Malaysian Islamic Party) was part of the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) (People’s Alliance) last time around in 2013. This time, they separated and took on both BN and the offshoot of PR, Pakatan Harapan (PH) (Alliance of Hope). There were three-cornered fights in 192 out of 222 seats contested. Out of these, 90 seats – almost half of the assembly – had spoiler effects.

Here I defined spoiler effects as seats where the losers combined votes are more than the winner. It means more people don’t want the winner to win. But the winner won anyway because the people only knows who not to vote for, but they don’t know who to vote for.

For example, the very first, the northernmost seat, P1 Padang Besar, already had spoiler effect.

Majority don’t want BN to win, but their vote split between PAS and Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (PPBM) (Malaysian United Indigenous Party) (who contested under Parti Keadilan Rakyat or PKR or National Justice Party flag). In this example, PAS can be said as spoiled PPBM’s vote.

BN benefitted at 46 seats due to this spoiler effect, but also lost 36 as a result. PH won 32 but lost 25. In the end, the spoiler effect did not seem to play a major role.

But the voting day set on a midweek, on a Wednesday, might had had an impact. The voter turnout was unusually high for a midweek polling day.

It might be due to angered voters, together with the disqualification of candidates from opposition, late delivery of postal votes, and advent and prominence of social media and crowdfunding.

Democracy: Choose Wisely

The last election, I was already eligible to vote, but I didn’t know who to vote, because I said both are corrupted, voting either side will not make any change for the betterment of my life.

Now I look back and notice, that is called ignorance. There are so many things I should be more aware of in terms of politics. I hate politics by nature, but I also learned to accept the fact that one cannot escape from politics. Politics affect our life.

Thankfully, our beloved country Malaysia practices democracy that we have a choice of who to vote. North Korea’s official name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which means it is actually a democratic country, but their people hardly go to elections because it’s not possible to form an opposition party. Anyone can form the opposition party there, but there’s also a good likelihood that you’ll be convicted of some crime – probably sedition or treason – and spend the winter sleeping on cold hard concrete floor.

But our Malaysia is not practicing the truest form of democracy. According to the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit, Malaysia is categorized as ‘flawed democracy’, ranked 64th in their Democracy Index, worse than Timor Leste, Indonesia or Thailand. I have a lengthy opinion on this, but later on that. (Not sure if I can spill my thoughts before the election, not sure if I can be disciplined enough to write consistently, we’ll see.)

But let’s say our democracy is perfect (I always use the word ‘our’ because I imply that my readers are Malaysians, but if you’re not, then imagine yourself a Malaysian, which I would very much welcome you), let’s assume the elections are perfectly clean and fair, everyone comes down to cast their votes, the judiciary system is independent, the freedom of speech is fully respected. Next question is, how will the elected government look like?

Democracy is just like Akademi Fantasia (if you’re familiar with this popular Malaysian reality show) or American Idol or any reality show that gives the full power of choice to their viewers. The winner is not necessarily the best singer (or comedian or cook or whatever the reality show is about) but he/she certainly is the most popular. There is no measurement of how good a singer is – it’s subjective. A good singer is not merely judged by the voice, but also appearance, showmanship, selection of songs suitable to his voice, ability to play instruments, charisma, charm to media and list goes on. Depending on what the viewers want, the results will differ. If all viewers who voted for the reality show are males, it is very likely the winner will be a female.

Same as choosing a political party. There are so many criteria to measure the competency of the party running the country. Which party can ensure harmony, unity, peace, stability, transparency, equality, justice and fairness, low crimes to the country while being ethical, virtuous, clean, down to earth? Democracy will only grant the people what the majority wants, even if the majority might not choose the best.

For example, I have a huge problem with racial discrimination in my country. Racial discrimination is not just legal, it is embedded in the Federal Constitution. But if the majority of Malaysian voters are racist, it would be a good tactic for competing parties to use that racism to their advantage. Whoever that openly opposes racism are less likely to win. It is noticeable that neither of both sides have ever mentioned in their manifesto or anywhere else – even informally – that if they win two-thirds majority in Parliament, they will try to amend the Federal Constitution to remove any form or racial preference or unequal rights. It is because, even if all non-Bumiputeras would vote them, there’s a possibility that all Bumiputeras would not vote them, they would still lose. Therefore, rather than, “Let’s fight for equal rights for Bumiputeras and non-Bumis,” it would be safer to say, “We care for the welfare of Bumiputeras and also non-Bumis.”

Another example, you know Pareto principle? Say, there’s this country where the 20% of the population – the elite – enjoys 80% of the country’s wealth, while the remaining 80% of the population only enjoys 20% of the country’s wealth. If a party promised them subsidies and all sorts of tax cuts to these 80%-class people, and these people believed those promises would be beneficial to them and vote for that party, that party could win, even if it might not be in the best interest of the country’s economics.

That is how democracy works. Everyone has equal voice. One cannot say, “I have a degree, I am more educated, I should be able to cast more votes than those drug addicts or illegal street racers.” My point is, democracy, even at its finest, is only as good as the people casting the votes.

So do choose wisely. Know what we want, and then we’ll know who to vote. I used to say, “I vote for this party or that party, what difference does it make?” I was wrong, there is a difference I can make. I just need to see the difference in them.