Malaysia State Elections: Penang, Selangor, N9, Kelantan, T'ganu, Kedah 2023 and by-elections 2023

[Joseph Cao]

There are five other seats (Stampin, Bintulu, Petra Jaya, Bandar Kuching, and Sibu) with populations above the national average, so we shall see if those come up in the final report.

Rumors already spreading of ten new seats for Sarawak. Miri and Hulu Rajang were reported on earlier, all the densely populated seats mentioned above except Petra Jaya have been namechecked as seats to be carved up, two more (Baram and Kapit) are similar to Hulu Rajang, and Kota Samarahan and Serian I honestly have no clue about, they're not especially overpopulated or rural. We shall see.

[Logical]

Do you have an estimate for how many seats the Dewan Rakyat will have by the end of the redistricting process?

[Oryxslayer]

Do you have an estimate for how many seats the Dewan Rakyat will have by the end of the redistricting process?

I would like to see what others have been saying, but the number that I had in my head after all the local elections was 280 or 282 depending on how one deals with Laubun and Putrajaya. 70/71 seats would be allocated to the two Borneo states to maintain the 25% ratio, or an increase of 14/15.

The base concept is that if one is going for finally something close to proportional distribution of seats on the Peninsula, and not doing the minimalist route or remove seats through redistribution, then Selangor needs to more than double in present size. Who means there will also need to be additional seats thrown to Johor Bahru and Kuala Lumpur among others to restore the equitability lost by balancing out Selangor. And then the Borneo states would still get seats despite their overrepresentation, to maintain their voice versus the larger peninsula.

A gain of 10 for Sarawak through suggests one of three things. Either that the strength of the GPS in the government means it's getting seats that would go to Sabah, the same situation is leading to an increase in the ratio of seats for Borneo, or, more likely, we are heading for a 300(302) seat final total. 10 on Sarawak brings it to 41, and 10 on Sabah brings that to 35  - a total of 76/300(302) or a maintaining of the present ratio.

That's just the seat count. Ideally there would also be a push to lower the disparity in seat electorates when viable, and get rid of the gerrymandering, but I suspect both will still be present just now benefit the current government.

[Joseph Cao]

It is definitely a mistake to look at this and think the end goal is a maintaining of the present ratio. The end goal is 35% for East Malaysia. That means even 10 seats apiece to Sabah and Sarawak won't be enough. There are already fresh rumors taking the number of new Sarawak seats up to 12.

Sarawak is being reported on now because its redelineation is separate from all the other states, but when Sabah's turn comes around (provided it is still in government) you can expect something similar to happen.

Population equity in the peninsula will not be a focus of the overall redelineation process this time, I feel reasonably confident in saying this. Adding seats in East Malaysia only takes you up to about 250 and I think that's where things will end up at the end of the full redelineation.

[Joseph Cao]

the number that I had in my head after all the local elections was 280 or 282 depending on how one deals with Laubun and Putrajaya.

I think it must be said, too, that this drastic number of seats added has never happened in Malaysian history. Don't look for it to happen any time soon either.

[Oryxslayer]

I don't see a situation where PH has some influence over this process and they don't give Selangor what it is owed.  There are of course a variety of ways to do that, but seemingly the easiest one is expansion en masse rather than cuts to some states. There's also partisan reasons to want to go beyond just throwing seats to Selangor and that's it, almost all leveling additions would go to the urban states presently under PH or BN. The additional seats could create PN packs to protect those currently in office,  or be the excuse needed to radically redraw in say a place like Melaka where PN seemingly punched above it's weight and BN below it.

[Joseph Cao]

I don't see a situation where PH has some influence over this process and they don't give Selangor what it is owed.  

I do, and it's very simple. East Malaysia will get to 35% this time – there is the political will to give them what they want. Giving any seats to anyone that isn't EM will make that more difficult, just purely as a matter of arithmetic.

There is no political will to give more than one player what they want, especially if it involves expanding the House by sixty or more seats. East Malaysia trumps PH because East Malaysia might abandon Anwar, and PH never will.

[xelas81]

I don't see a situation where PH has some influence over this process and they don't give Selangor what it is owed.  

I do, and it's very simple. East Malaysia will get to 35% this time – there is the political will to give them what they want. Giving any seats to anyone that isn't EM will make that more difficult, just purely as a matter of arithmetic.

There is no political will to give more than one player what they want, especially if it involves expanding the House by sixty or more seats. East Malaysia trumps PH because East Malaysia might abandon Anwar, and PH never will.

I know that expanding the parliament size is almost always unpopular with the public but doesn't benefits of expansion for PH outweigh any decrease in their supports?
Honestly give East Malaysia 40% of their seats in exchange for less urban-rural malapportionment in West Malaysia.

[Joseph Cao]

I don't see a situation where PH has some influence over this process and they don't give Selangor what it is owed.  

I do, and it's very simple. East Malaysia will get to 35% this time – there is the political will to give them what they want. Giving any seats to anyone that isn't EM will make that more difficult, just purely as a matter of arithmetic.

There is no political will to give more than one player what they want, especially if it involves expanding the House by sixty or more seats. East Malaysia trumps PH because East Malaysia might abandon Anwar, and PH never will.

I know that expanding the parliament size is almost always unpopular with the public but doesn't benefits of expansion for PH outweigh any decrease in their supports?
Honestly give East Malaysia 40% of their seats in exchange for less urban-rural malapportionment in West Malaysia.

It is less so "unpopular with the public" than "rocking the boat too much" which has been something Parliament is naturally averse to. The public, I would venture to guess, really doesn't care. Perhaps it would be in PH's interest to push for it but even legislators don't really prioritize this as an issue.

Reducing Peninsular malapportionment would be the best outcome out of what is plausible, and I expect there to be a continued push for that, but it will have to wait for whenever Peninsular reapportionment actually begins.

[Joseph Cao]

Might be worth keeping an eye on multiple potential by-elections in the offing.

So the relevant background is that in the wake of serial party-switching in recent years, Parliament passed a constitutional amendment in 2022 that effectively locks MPs into the party label they were elected under. Anyone who hops to a different party anyway, is expelled from their party, or otherwise experiences a change of party automatically has their seat vacated and a by-election triggered. A number of states have passed similar laws at the state level. This is meant to enforce intra-party discipline; therefore MUDA's move to the opposition is fine, since that was a decision undertaken by the party as a whole and carried out by its only MP, Syed Saddiq, who was also president at the time to boot.

(The five Sabah MPs who moved en bloc to the government benches in the immediate wake of the 2022 election despite being Bersatu party members are also fine, since they were elected under a direct GRS coalition label, though more questionably so, since Bersatu's lawsuit challenging that decision was thrown out of court on separation of powers grounds, and the Penang High Court ruled last November that Penang's own anti-party hopping law did not apply in the inverse case of two Bersatu state assemblymen defecting en bloc despite being coalition members of PH.)

In order to enforce these laws, political parties have had to amend their own constitutions to match. So for example the DAP constitution now stipulates that an elected official who doesn't vote the party line automatically gets expelled from the party and triggers the law. All parties except Bersatu had amended their constitutions prior to the 2022 election. Why Bersatu never took this extra step we'll probably never know, but then-Law Minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, who later became Dewan Negara president and is now the governor of Sarawak, claimed that his original draft of the anti-hopping law would have covered this directly but four cabinet ministers from Bersatu objected to its inclusion.

On October 12 last year, Kuala Kangsar MP Iskandar Dzulkarnain Abdul Khalid of Bersatu formally declared his support for the government without leaving his party, citing the rising cost of living and his need for constituency funds, because of course those still aren't allocated equally to opposition MPs and although Anwar had set up a protocol for equal distribution of funds the opposition leader Hamzah Zainudin has refused to negotiate for them. Other MPs have followed him. The count is now up to six, all from Bersatu: Iskandar Dzulkarnain, Labuan MP Suhaili Abdul Rahman, Gua Musang MP Azizi Abu Naim, Jeli MP Zahari Kechik, Bukit Gantang MP Syed Abu Hussin Hafiz Syed Abu Fasal*, and Tanjong Karang MP Zulkafperi Hanapi.

Bersatu had suspended Iskandar Dzulkarnain and Suhaili in response, which will prevent them from being reselected come the next election† but otherwise does not affect the party's seat count in Parliament. But last week it finally got around to amending its constitution to close this loophole. The amendment isn't retroactive, but it should prevent more MPs from pulling the same stunt. (There were various rumors of more impending declarations, up to ten, some of whose names were personally deducible.) Now the party plans to get its rogue MPs on record by sending them letters asking if they still support Anwar's government, which would give them an excuse to vacate the seats.

There are still ways around this, in theory. The MPs could simply not respond to the letters, although this dodging won't work for long. Bersatu's amendment needs to be approved by the Registrar of Societies, which has approved all the other parties' corresponding amendments, but this is the same RoS that dragged its feet on registering PH as a legal entity until the coalition actually took power, so you never know really.

Which brings us to yesterday, when Selat Klang assemblyman Abdul Rashid Asari of Bersatu declared his support for the Selangor state government. In addition to the cost-of-living spiel he has claimed to be "concerned" with coalition partner PAS invoking the wrath of the Selangor Sultan, who sent Hadi Awang a very strongly worded letter of disapproval last week, and who is of course the same Sultan whom Kedah menteri besar Sanusi Mohd Nor insulted last year. At the time I wrote about Abdul Rashid's constituency:

Klang’s viability as a seaport owes much to the good geographical conditions of the coast around it. Pulau Klang and its attendant islands, including Pulau Indah, guard the mouth of the Klang River. The mudflats up and down the coast recede here, allowing free access to the river mouth. Most importantly the Klang Strait passing between the two of them is deep and conducive to the passage of all kinds of sea traffic which has been calling at Klang and its port since literal time immemorial.

At the southern tip of the Selat Klang seat stands the privatized Northport Industrial Estate, which handles liquid cargoes for the port ranging from palm oil products to industrial and specialty chemicals. In spite of – or because of – the nature of the work here and the direction the revenue flows, this is a desperately poor area, even more so post-COVID as the pandemic shuttered any itinerant jobs the locals might have held. This was responsible for pushing a lot of M40 residents over the line into the B40 category. Around 80% of the seat’s voters, mostly Malay, can be classified as urban poor.

This was no-go territory for PH parties until 2018. But it must be noted that Bersatu’s Abdul Rashid Asari barely unseated the PAS incumbent that year with a majority of exactly 500 votes; that incumbent was Halimah Ali, and this was the seat that put her over the top in the race for the Kapar parliamentary seat last year. Now that Abdul Rashid is standing for reelection under the PN banner it is probably not an exaggeration to label this Bersatu’s safest incumbent seat in the state. A fitting berth for the Selangor Bersatu chief.

Meanwhile Roslee Abdul Hamid, the Kapar UMNO chief and a former member of the Port Klang Authority board, has been slated to fight this contest for the coalition government. PRM’s deputy president and ex-PKR youth chief Mohamad Ezam Mohd Noor is the final member of the ballot. PN hold

I wrote there that Abdul Rashid was the Selangor Bersatu chief. He no longer is; Azmin took over that position after the state elections, being the opposition leader, and it's been well reported on that certain quarters in Selangor PN don't like "gang Azmin" throwing their weight around. So there is a very obvious unstated motive for defection. Regardless, assuming the Bersatu amendment goes through, this absolutely triggers Selangor's state anti-hopping law. We shall see what happens.


*Syed Abu Hussin actually declared support in late November, two weeks after he said in Parliament that he would declare support if Anwar gave him RM30 million for his constituency, which is certainly one of the tactics of all time.

†On the other side of the benches this also applies to Sembrong MP Hishammuddin Hussein of keris-waving fame, who was suspended from UMNO early last year as jaichind and I posted about back then.

[Joseph Cao]

On the same front there is the curious case of Parti Sarawak Bersatu (PSB), no relation to Bersatu, a splinter-splinter-splinter party that collected some of the SUPP bleeding hearts and Sarawak's best serial party-hoppers. They became the largest opposition party in the Sarawak assembly after DAP got decimated in the 2021 elections, with four assemblymen:

• former state finance minister Wong Soon Koh, the party president, sacked from SUPP back in 2011 and since then has climbed on various clown car parties in and out of the ruling coalition's parade;
• the historically sexy Johnical Rayong Ngipa, to borrow a phrase, also late of SUPP;
• our old friend Baru Bian (PBDS-MDC-SNAP-PKR-Independent-PSB, in that order), at the time an MP, who most recently switched parties in the Sheraton Move;
• and See Chee How, who was sacked from PKR for being part of gang Azmin but got reelected under PSB colors before leaving the party in 2022 to become an independent.

Minus See, these three and the rest of PSB plan to dissolve their party and join the state government by having all their members apply to become members of PDP, a GPS component party led by our other old friend Tiong King Sing who is currently in the news again. Or perhaps it has already happened. Or perhaps it is happening now. It's not very clear; everyone involved is mum on when it takes place, but Tiong at least seems to think this move doesn't contravene Sarawak's state anti-hopping law.

This law* is looser than the federal version; there is an explicit exemption for members of a party that gets dissolved, as has happened/is happening/will happen to PSB, but it would also be triggered by members who, not being a member of any party, subsequently apply to join a party, as is apparently being recommended for ex-PSB members to do. The precise legal status will depend on whether the ex-PSB assemblymen become independents at any point but the language that Soon Koh et al. are using in public seems to indicate that they will. That would be grounds for a challenge in court.

*Passed in November 2022, and not retroactive, which is why See Chee How is still an assemblyman.