Just some quick mathematics on today's Sarawak elections. 71 seats are up for grabs in Sarawak out of 222. The voter turnout was about 672,000. Based on the last elections in March 2008, the total number of people who voted in the whole of Malaysia was about 11 million. So, the proportion of voters who voted in Sarawak is about 6% - see Chart 1.
 |
| Chart 1: Proportion of Sarawak voters to total voters in Malaysia |
Yet, the number of seats that are represented by Sarawak is 32% - see Chart 2.
 |
| Chart 2: Proportion of Parliament seats allocated to Sarawak |
Does anyone else see a problem with that? Is it not fishy to have 6% of the people in Malaysia determine 32% of the country's leaders? Furthermore, the government added three seats to Sarawak in the 2008 elections, as if it were not imbalanced enough. If the government wins two-thirds majority again in this coming elections, it is almost guaranteed that more gerrymandering will happen. What say you, Malaysia?
No comments:
Post a Comment