THE CICAK.com

Study in sweets: A bitter look at election tactics (Part 1)

By RACHEL LEOW

Lesson #1: Malapportionment

The problem with the term “a bag of sweets” is that “bag” is a rather arbitrary quantifier. Given a large enough bag,

both the above count as “bags” of sweets, even though the bag on the right might contain nearly 10 times as many sweets as the one on the left.

The problem with the term “representative government” is that the term “representative” is arbitrary in just the same way. Given an unscrupulous enough incumbent party,

both the above count as “representative” parliamentary seats, even though the seat on the right might be represented by 10 times as many votes as the one on the left.

The way this is achieved is through delineation of constituencies. There used to be a provision in Malaysia’s 1957 Federal Constitution which stipulated that the disparity between the number of voters in each constituency should not exceed 15 percent. That is to say, the number of sweets in each bag must not differ by more than 15 percent:

However, a judicious constitutional amendment eventually did away with this stipulation, which means that today, there is no limit on
how large or small the bag of sweets can be.

Thus, according to SUARAM’s 2004 human rights report, during the 2004 elections, the biggest parliamentary constituency, Kapar, was 20 times larger than the smallest constituency, Putrajaya.

I needn’t add that Putrajaya is a Barisan stronghold, surely? Why, that might give the impression that a single Barisan sweet is worth 20 Keadilan sweets, and I wouldn’t want to be seditious.

Only kidding about not wanting to be seditious. In SUARAM’s report, a political analyst calculated that a single B.N. voter is effectively equivalent to 27.3 Keadilan voters, due solely to this deliberate malapportionment of constituency representation.

“One person, one vote”? I don’t think so. Call this a “representative government” if you like — I wouldn’t.

Tune for next week’s Study in Sweets issue on gerrymandering.

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Study in Sweets is a series of brief explanations on selected election tactics employed by the incumbent party to ensure they remain in power. The author promises to actually write an analytical article at the end of it, after she has had her fun with the irreverent illustrations.
Illustrations by RACHEL LEOW / theCICAK
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RACHEL LEOW is a contributing writer for theCICAK.

Rachel is your average atypical Malaysian girl who aspires to great things, if she could only figure out what those great things are in the first place. She does History at Warwick University, and likes her ivory towers enough to consider postgraduate study. Her one journalistic triumph was an essay published in the International Herald Tribune, which she wrote when she was sixteen and cannot bear to read anymore. She is compulsively anal about apostrophes. Visit her site.