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Key Highlights
Harapan manifesto suddenly doable?
DAP stays in govt
Can danc seats solve election problems?
Harapan manifesto suddenly doable
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has signalled that Pakatan Harapan’s election manifesto is achievable after all even in a coalition government setting.
After suffering a string of election defeats, Anwar announced at the PKR congress on Saturday that the government will abolish the University and University Colleges Act.
The justification given is that students were not satisfied with amendments to the Act and wanted greater freedoms, which he supported.
Anwar is expected to make more announcements in the coming days.
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DAP stays in govt
As expected, the DAP convention has resolved for the party to stay in the government.
Of the delegates that attended, 1,857 voted in favour of staying in the Madani administration, while 242 voted to leave.
However, it’s not a done deal for DAP as the party has renewed its intent to push for more reforms to be carried out while it’s still in power.
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Can danc seats solve election problems?
One of the big problems with Malaysian elections is the first-past-the-post system. It’s great when there are only two parties contesting, but when it’s a multi-cornered fight, it creates issues.
One of those issues is that a party can win with less than 50 percent of votes, which Pakatan Harapan did in 28 of the 71 seats it won in GE15.
This is also the motivator behind the BN-PN “Malay unity” pact, which seeks to consolidate Malay votes to defeat Harapan.
But this is also a problem, as even if 49 percent of voters pick Harapan, it doesn’t mean they get 49 percent of seats due to malapportionment and other issues.
To solve this, Sunway University political scientist Wong Chin Huat is proposing democratically appointed non-constituency (danc) seats.
The long and short is that, after an election, the total vote share of each party or coalition is tabulated and a set number of Danc seats will be distributed to reflect that vote share.
Wong argued that one political effect of the proposed system would be to reduce the incentive for BN and PN to fully consolidate their votes through one-on-one seat negotiations, as well as resolve Malay anxiety that they would lose representation in three-cornered fights.
This would also ensure Harapan gets fair representation at the state legislature.
Wong has submitted proposals to both the Penang and Selangor state governments to enact the reforms.
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