In a turn of events that would surprise very few, but would prompt angry rebuttals from many anyway: a global study on the integrity of elections last year placed Malaysia’s 13th General Elections pretty much near the bottom of the pile, placing 66th out of a total of 73 elections surveyed from July 2, 2012 to December 31, 2013.
The Electoral Integrity Project (EIP), twinly based at the University of Sydney and Harvard University, released its findings this month showing GE13 as being perceived to have low levels of integrity, caused by problematic electoral boundaries and election laws.
Two other Southeast Asian countries were included in last year’s research: Cambodia came in lower at 69th place, while the Philippines at 47th made into the category of countries whose elections had moderate levels of integrity.
The EIP uses a 100-point Perception of Electoral Integrity (PEI) index, in which a higher score means a more favourable evaluation. Malaysia’s score of 48.4 points is a far cry from Norway’s which ranked the highest in last year’s research with 86.4 points.
“Worldwide, electoral integrity is at risk in Southeast Asia,” the EIP report said.
“Recent electoral protests and instability in Thailand, Cambodia, and Malaysia vividly illustrate these challenges,” it added.
The EIP claims that Barisan Nasional’s (BN) victory in GE13 was attributed to gerrymandering, or the malapportionment of electoral boundaries.
“The ruling BN coalition have a distinct advantage in constituency size in their mainly rural, Malay base while the urban strongholds and ethnic Chinese populations supporting opposition parties have districts with much larger electorates,” said the report, pointing out that the Putrajaya federal constituency has just 15,791 eligible voters, compared to the Kapar constituency with 144,159 eligible voters.
The EIP also noted that the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) opposition pact bagged just 89 federal seats, or 40 per cent, of the 222-seat Dewan Rakyat, despite winning 50.87 per cent of the popular vote in the election that is based on the first-past-the-post system.
“The election also saw 80 per cent turnout, the largest in the nation’s history. The outcome deepened the challenge to the legitimacy of the government,” said the report.
Shortly after the May 5 election, thousands rallied in protest against what they said were tainted polls. One key complaint was that the indelible ink used to prevent voters from casting votes repeatedly, washed off too easily.
The EIP observed that BN enjoys greater access to the media. PR, however, lacks access to the government-controlled radio and television, while many newspapers have close ties to the ruling coalition, though the opposition pact has space in online media.
“Access to political finance is also imbalanced,” the report said.
Photo: Udey Ismail / Flickr
Source: The Malay Mail Online
