Pakatan women suggest a new formula
Published on: Friday, December 08, 2017
Kota Kinabalu: Wanita Pakatan Harapan Sabah called for bold reforms to the provision for six nominated members in the Sabah State Assembly (DUN) to turn them into Women-Only Additional Seats (WOAS) allocated by way of party-list. Sabah DAP Wanita Chief Jannie Lasimbang in a statement, Thursday, said, Sabah should abandon the purely First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) electoral system, which is highly winner-takes-all and incompatible with plural societies. "When there is only one winner in a constituency, the losing parties get no representation in the assembly.
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To gain representation, smaller groups are forced to merge into larger groups with more rigid boundaries and antagonistic relations," she said. She further said in 48 years since 1969, FPTP elections have successfully divided the Sabah society along ethno-religious lines, reducing its rich demographic landscape of 42 ethnic groups into mere three blocs: Muslim Bumiputeras, Non-Muslim Bumiputeras and Chinese.What happen to identities that have existed even before the formation of Malaysia, whether it is Bajau, Bisaya, Brunei, Bugis, Dusun, Iranun, Kadazan, Kedayan, Lundayeh, Murut, Suluk, Rumanau, Rungus, Sungai, Tausug, Tidung, and many more? The tripartite division introduced by Kuala Lumpur is not only destroying the rich cultural heritage of Sabah, but also tearing apart her social fabric and familial relations amongst her people.
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"It erodes our unique Sabah identity and makes Sabah increasingly like a boring clone of Malaya. "Many Sabahan families are multi-ethnic and multi-religious. We hate to be pigeon-holed into any of the three big blocs. Sabah is way richer than what the Malayan ruling elites can comprehend.
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"For example, a Bajau Muslim is not a Malay. A Christian Kadazan is not just a Christian. A Sino-dusun is also more than a Chinese," she said. She said Wanita Pakatan Harapan Sabah believes it is high time for Sabah to abandon the pure FPTP system that only serves to let others divide and rule Sabahans, pitting siblings, cousins and in-laws against each other. "FPTP may be the simplest system but it is certainly not the best system. Even in the Commonwealth world, plural societies like South Africa and Sri Lanka have recognised the divisive nature of FPTP and ditched it in favour of Party-List Proportional Representation (List-PR)," she said. Incidentally, List-PR is also the system used in Indonesia, where our brethren in North Kalimantan just south of the border gain meaningful representation both at home and in their national capital.Under List-PR, one constituency elects several to perhaps dozens of representatives, parties nominate lists of candidates, voters vote for parties, and the seats are allocated to parties based on vote shares. In other words, if there are 20 seats up for grabs, and three parties respectively win 50 per cent, 30 per cent and 20 per cent of votes, then they should be allocated 10, six and four seats respectively, and the first 10, first six and first four candidates on these parties' lists will be elected. List-PR can, therefore, ensure that the people's mandate is respected. Under such system, a party winning only 47 per cent of votes cannot win 60 per cent of seats. List-PR also facilitates implementation of quota for under-represented groups, in the form of placement rule. For example, the law may stipulate for every candidate list submitted by the parties, one in every two candidates has to be a woman, one in three has to be an indigenous person, one in four has to be below 40 years. In other words, List-PR may make our legislatures more representatives, both in terms of political parties we support and social groups we constitute. "We need not do away with the FPTP system completely. We can moderate its damaging influences by adding a List-PR component, which are sometimes called non-constituency seats if the entire country or state is made one at-large constituency.The 2017 National Conference on Gender and Electoral Reform organised by Institut Wanita Berdaya on November 24 has called upon all states to introduce List-PR non-constituency seats to beef up women representation. For states with less than 20pc women representation, the Conference calls for 20pc of non-constituency seats, all reserved for women, which may be termed "Women-Only Additional Seats" (WOAS). This will expedite the achievement of minimum 30% women representation in legislatures, the global standard set in the 1995 Beijing Platform. Sadly, after 22 years, Malaysia still has only 10.8pc women in the Parliament and 11.1 per cent in all state legislatures combined. Shamefully, Sabah has only four women assemblywomen or 6.7 per cent. But Sabah can easily reverse this because we already have non-constituency seats, known as the "nominated members" under Article 14(1)© of the Sabah State Constitution.The Governor may appoint up to six "nominated members", normally amongst ruling party politicians. While this provision has not been used in recent years, it is nevertheless an impediment to democracy because it dilutes opposition.Wanita Pakatan Harapan Sabah propose for Article 14(1)(c) to be amended in three aspects:Increase the number from six to 18, which will combine with the 73 constituency assemblypersons to form a 91-member Assembly, where the 18 will constitute 20 per cent;The 18 seats will be allocated to parties based on their vote share in the coming state election;All candidates for nominated members must be women.Aside from the gender quota, this will effectively turn Sabah's electoral system into one resembling the Mixed Member Majority (MMM) system in many countries, including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, except that voters don't get to vote directly for parties.If, again, only four women are elected as constituency assemblypersons in the next election, there will nevertheless be 22 women in total, or 24.2 per cent of the new assembly. If Barisan Nasional wins the exact same vote share as it did in 2013, 56 per cent, 11 women from BN will take these seats while the remaining seven would go to opposition women.With 18 positions to fill constituencies, parties can also nominate women from the smaller ethnic groups which currently have no representation in the Assembly.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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