‘PANEL MUST BE INDEPENDENT’
Appointment of members must be free from political influence, says Bersih 2.0
THE proposed formation of a special commission to handle redrawing of electoral boundaries in the country comes on the heels of an expansive increase of new voters following plans to implement automatic registration.
The latter has the potential of changing the demographics of electorates in certain states, thus necessitating the redelineation process to provide a corresponding representative for each constituency.
However, the introduction of the commission to facilitate the redelineation exercise as proposed by the Election Reform Committee (ERC) would be no walk in the park as it involves amendments to several articles in the Federal Constitution.
Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections (Bersih 2.0) chairman Thomas Fann said the proposal was worth considering as it
would not only ease the workload of the Election Commission (EC) but also provide another layer of checks and balances to the whole process of election management.
“What is important is to ensure that the delimitation or boundary commission is absolutely independent.
“This involves how and who are appointed into the new (special) commission.
“There must be a legislated nomination, selection and appointment process that is transparent and free from political influence so that men and women of impeccable integrity and qualified can be appointed.
“This, however, requires the amendment of Article 113 of the Constitution (on conduct of elections) to remove EC from such a role and for the new commission to be defined,” he told the New Straits Times.
It was reported that ERC chairman Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman said the special commission was proposed to ensure a just redelineation process and silence criticism that it was politically motivated.
Several countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, Rashid had said, had implemented similar moves by setting up a similar commission to carry out the redelineation exercise.
Asked who should sit on the commission, Fann said it should comprise people from the judiciary, civil service, civil society organisations as well as academicians.
He also pointed out the need to amend Article 46 of the Constitution, which outlines the composition of the House of Representatives, to conduct redelineation exercises immediately.
The amendment, he said, was needed to address issues related to the exacerbation of malapportionment of constituencies that are considered too large, especially those in urban areas following the passing of the Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2019, which enabled automatic registration of voters and lowering of the voting age from 21 to 18.
Based on the birth per year estimate of those who were born between 1997 and 2005, Fann said the amendment would lead to an increase of four million first-time eligible voters by 2023.
“On top of that, there will be another four million voters of people above 21 and eligible to vote but yet to register as voters as a result of the automatic registration of voters.
“The total number of voters is expected to increase to 23 million or 53 per cent from the 15 million voters on the electoral roll.
“As concentrations of these young voters would be in urban constituencies, the seriously malapportioned urban constituencies at present will only get worse,” he added.
He said the current smallest to biggest constituency ratio in Selangor which stood at one to 4.38 (1:4.38) could become one to six (1:6).
“This would clearly violate the principle set in Section 2(c) of the 13th Schedule of the Constitution where it states that constituencies should be ‘approximately equal’.
“With such significant increases in electorate, that would exacerbate malapportionment, a redelineation exercise must be triggered to increase seats.
“Otherwise, we will have to go into the next general election (GE15) or even GE16 before the EC can conduct another redelineation exercise because Article 113(2)(ii) states that there shall be an interval of not less than eight years between the date of completion of one review, and the date of commencement of the next review,” he said.
Conducting elections without readjusting constituency electorate size, said Fann, would only lead to discontent among voters in the urban areas whose vote value was much less than that of voters in the rural areas.
He said, according to Article 113(6) of the Constitution, the country was divided into three “units of review”, namely the states of Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak.