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Study in sweets: A bitter look at election tactics (Part 2)

by RACHEL LEOW

Lesson #2: Gerrymandering

Let’s say I challenge Ahmed to a competition in eating sweets. If he manages to eat 20 sweets, but I eat 21, I win. If he maintains at 20 sweets, and I eat 40 sweets, I still win. If in the last round, his score is still 20 sweets, and I somehow manage to stuff 300 sweets down my throat, I still win.

The excess sweets, in this scenario, are meaningless. Whether I consume 21 sweets or 300 sweets, I have still bested Ahmed. No amount of additional sweets thereafter will make the win any more of a win.

Similarly, if a given region in Malaysia is a Barisan Nasional stronghold, consistently besting its neighbouring regions by an excess of 10,000 votes, those additional votes are essentially meaningless. Barisan has already won in that region, and no amount of votes thereafter will make the win any more of a win.

A scrupulous government might take those additional votes as a clear indication of support, and proudly work to maintain this achievement. An unscrupulous government, however, will find something for those extra sweets to do.

Here’s where gerrymandering comes in.

Let’s say that emboldened by my previous wins, I partake in another sweet-eating competition with Bala. I manage to eat 100 sweets, but Bala, to my utter horror, nonchalantly gulps down 200.

What do I do?

It is clear that the competition with Bala is far less of a certain win than the one with Ahmed. And eventually, the thought occurs: what if I took some of the 300 sweets I ate in the previous competition with Ahmed, and used them to win this competition with Bala too?

Ahmed, if you’ll recall, only ate 20 sweets, while I ate 300. So if I take 200 sweets from Ahmed’s competition and added it to my score for Bala’s competition, this is how the final scoresheet would look like:

The difference between “before” and “after” represents the effect of gerrymandering, which is effectively the distribution of one’s strengths across one’s weaknesses. And as you can see, done properly, it has resulted in an additional win for me, the vastly unscrupulous - if extraordinarily wily - competitor.

Conceptually, this is pretty much what happens in Malaysia. But instead of shifting around the actual scores, Barisan speculates on which seats have been historically strong and guaranteed Barisan wins (the Ahmed competitions), and which are a little more questionable (the Bala competitions). They then redefine the boundaries of parliamentary constituencies, or “shift the scores around,” to distribute their strengths across their weaknesses.

Take the parliamentary constituency of Pokok Sena, for example.

One of Pokok Sena’s constituent state seats, Tanjung Seri, was won by a Barisan candidate in the 1999 elections, but by a hairline margin of 400 votes. This was clearly a Bala competition - an uncertain and questionable competition that might swing either way.

Derga, another state seat in adjacent Alor Star, had been won by a Barisan candidate in the same elections, but by a much more comfortable majority of 5,456 votes. This was the Ahmed competition - a clear win for Barisan. (Statistics from SUARAM).

Unsurprisingly, for the 2004 elections, Tanjung Seri was declared to now be under Alor Setar, and Derga was “moved” to Pokok Sena. Assuming voter preferences remain the same, by doing this, Barisan significantly increased its chances of a victory over Bala in Pokok Sena. It also won the Ahmed competition by retaining the Alor Star parliamentary seat.

I inevitably became gravely ill from consuming all these sweets. It is a great pity that retribution cannot also befall those who practice such deceit in matters more important and consequential than a sweets-eating competition. Perhaps it is time someone fed them their just desserts?

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

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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.