2 - The Electoral System: Origin, Rationale and Critique

Summary

This chapter will examine the origin of Malaysia's first-past-thepost (FPTP) system and the manner in which elections have been conducted. Malaysia, with its unique distribution of ethnic political parties, has a generic FPTP single-member constituency system, which was originally implemented by the British in 1955 at the national level under self-government. After Independence in 1957, following the recommendations of the Reid Constitutional Commission, a federal form of government and elections, based on Westminster-styled institutions, was implemented.

The electoral system is broadly anchored to elements of procedural democracy such as transparent and autonomous electoral institutions and procedures, freedom of political association and campaigning and the like, guaranteed by law and constitutional provisions which devolve duties of conducting elections to an independent Election Commission (EC). By and large the system introduced at Independence in terms of broad procedure and institutions has remained intact. The erosion of some of these constitutional guarantees owing to political developments along with changes and amendments to some of these procedures and the introduction of new elements will be discussed in this chapter.

Malaysia's electoral system as its stands today harks back to the report by the Constituency Delineation Commission for the Federation of Malaya of 1954, headed by Lord Merthyr (hereinafter, Merthyr Commission), which recommended the delimitation of the fifty-two constituencies in Malaya's first federal election of 1955. The report goes into considerable detail in making its recommendations, including the reasons for the adoption of the FPTP single-member constituency model and the reasons for the appropriate system of electoral representation that should be adopted in the then Malayan Federation. The issues of apportionment or distribution of voters and rural weightage and its rationale along with the role and powers given to the EC were arguably the most crucial matters taken up by the Reid Commission. The Reid Commission, which crafted the Malayan Constitution, recommended an electoral system based on that proposed by the 1954 Merthyr Commission, but it was no doubt also influenced by the conduct of the First Election of the Members of the Legislative Council of the Federation of Malaya and the detailed report submitted on it (hereinafter, the Smith Report).