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.

Malaysia’s 2nd independence

I had done my duty. I wasn’t confident. But I was hopeful. I should have known, high hopes only lead to heartbreak.

I waited long for the results. The Election Commission (EC) seemed to be deliberately being slow in announcing seats won by opposition and swift for those won by the incumbent government. In the end, the sad news emerged: The incumbent government – racist and accused to be corrupt – has won and will rule for another 5 years.

The worse thing that etched in my memory was how people reacted to the results. The opposition actually won the popular vote despite losing the elections, and it was largely attributed to the so-called Chinese tsunami. The headlines of the incumbent ruling party’s mouthpiece was, “Apa lagi Cina mau?”, what more do the Chinese want?

Hatred and racism were stewing, blaming the Chinese and how they should pay. And most of these toxic speeches were from people close to me. It was devastating to me. I thought we were all humans. I thought Muslims should be good examples of Islam by compassion.

The first day of work after that elections, I was very sombre. I skipped lunch and went straight to surau, the prayer room. I took my ablution, splashed water on my face, cupped my face with my hands then sobbed. I was the only one, I let it out. Why Allah? Why these racists, oppressors are the ones who will rule the land? I googled some Quran verses, and two of them deeply touched me, as if Allah spoke directly to me. He must have.

Fussilat (chapter 41), verse 34:

Good and evil are not equal. Repel evil with what is better, then behold! Your enemies will become close friends.

Al-Maa-idah (chapter 5), verse 8:

O you who believe, stand firm for Allah as witnesses of justice, and do not let your hatred to some people prevent you to do justice. Be just, that is nearer to piety. And fear Allah, He is All-Aware of what you do.

I memorized these verses and recite it regularly until this day. It has become my strength.

Five long years has since passed. The ruling government seemed to be more corrupt and drawing more opposition even from within. Those people near to me who were staunch racists are now against the party they formerly supported.

But EC were never going to make it easy. They set the polling day on Wednesday, the most inconvenient day of the week. They sent the postal votes late, making it almost impossible to return the votes in time. Long queues that did not make it by 5:00 PM. And many more I don’t bother to list here.

But Malaysians were strong and united. They did fundraising for people travel back home to vote. Strangers gathered to pass their postal votes. Airlines offered discounted tickets and extra flights. Outlets offered freebies and discounts for voters. The solidarity can be felt.

Again, the results were late again. But people stayed up. Nothing mattered more. In the end, it was a landslide. It was not a Malay tsunami or Chinese or urban or youth, it was the people’s tsunami. Never in the entire history of the independent country they had a different party ruling them. This time they will have one.

It was unprecedented. Next morning, people got up early, despite sleeping really late the night before. The air felt different. This is a new Malaysia.

Anywhere I went, I looked at the inked fingers, I looked at their faces, everyone seemed to be cheerful, happy, half-smiling back at me. This is more than a public holiday, more than Malaysia winning the regional football tournament. Everyone seemed to be silently acknowledging each other. We may not know each other, but we are not strangers anymore, we were united yesterday, and we did it.

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Epilogue

After I finished my upper secondary school certification exams (SPM), I went to a motivational camp, and we were made to share our happiest moments. I can’t think of much, so I said my happiest moments was when I got really good results for my lower secondary school certification (PMR), and then my SPM trial.

But back then, I almost expected those good results. Just a couple of years after that, my happiest moment did came, when Liverpool won the UEFA Champions League, the biggest club level football prize.

The thing is, my happiest moment in my life was nothing of my own doing.

Now I’m a father of three, and any parent would testify there is no feeling that can compare than your child’s birth.

But this elections is definitely up there, in the highlights of my life. I played my part, part of a huge nationwide movement that tells our oppressors, we will not condone anymore. The rules were not fair, but we played by the unfair rules anyway, and won! We won! For the first time ever!

All the ceremonies that I used to be bored, press conferences, swear in, cabinet unveiling, I now follow with great interest.

People are still bringing up the race cards, but why should I care. Now I know they are the minority.

I’m acutely lacking sleep, as so most Malaysians. But I’m working tomorrow, unlike the rest of the country. Because I’m in an opposition state now, and they decided to declare their public holidays on different dates. But I don’t mind. Everything seems sunny now.

It is almost nothing will spoil my sunshine. Not even if Liverpool lose their upcoming UEFA Champions League final.

Credit to Wan Azizah 2018.