Gerakan Selangor: Unfair Redelineation Leads To Deepen Polarization (20.9.16)

Gerakan Selangor State Liaison Chairman Dato David Ang today described the redelineation of electoral boundaries proposed by the Election Commission (EC) as unfair and disregarding the “one man, one vote, one value” principle. The redelineation, once implemented will leads to deepen racial polarization in the country!
He said, a so called “free and fair election” should be based on equal proportion of voters in every constituency. Unfortunately, instead of eliminating the malapportionment, the EC proposal will widen disparity in the number of voters. For instance, there are only 17,627 voters in Putrajaya compare to 150,439 in Damansara, clearly indicating that voters have been relocated “irrationally”. Worse still, the name changes of some seats after delineated appears that not only voters are being moved, even districts have been “massively moved on the map”.
“More importantly, changing the ethnic structure of voters for the sake of winning is like dividing races and group one race into one area. This will create more racial issues thus undermine racial harmony, and it’s certainly against BN coalition approach as well as the multicultural spirit in the country!”
“On this ground, even UMNO should not agree with EC as it is against the spirit and political ideologies of the nation and BN!”
He opined that it is a democratic procedure for the EC to carry out the redelineation of electoral boundaries in accordance with the Federal Constitution. The last delineation was done in 2003. Due to drastic change of demographic structure and number of voters since then, a new redelineation is understandable.
“The EC Chairman Mohd Hashim said the EC undertook the redelineation in accordance with the Federal Constituition and denied it was done in the interests of certain parties, and the power to approve falls under the jurisdiction of Dewan Rakyat; as I said, the redelineation is a democratic process, that’s not the issue.”
“The problem is, why is there a big difference of voter numbers beyond reasoning? And after the redelineation, electoral polarisation phenomenon can be seen in most of the seats?”