Don't rule out electoral changes, says Gerakan

Notwithstanding Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Shahidan Kassim telling Parliament yesterday that Malaysia will stick to the first-past-the-post election system, BN component party Gerakan wants alternatives to be considered.

Gerakan vice-president Kohilan Pillay (left) said today Malaysia would be better off with a mixed-member proportional representation system, such as practised in Germany and New Zealand.

And Malaysia could also borrow an idea from India, on the use of the digitised voting system.

The former has been proposed by Coalition for Free and Fair Elections (Bersih) and the latter would respond to allegations of electoral fraud by PKR, Kohilan said in a press statement.

“Malaysia is in an ever-changing era, with certain problems pointed out before, such as the increasing number of urban voters.

“Also, the imbalance in the number of voters in one area compared with another has to be seriously looked into,” Kohilan said in a statement.

Under a group representation system, for example, a team of MPs could better divide duties between meeting constituency needs and not losing focus on government work, he said.

Kohilan also urged the Election Commission (EC) to improve itself by cleaning up the electoral roll and to update and upgrade the election laws.

He hoped that the re-delineation of the electoral constituencies will be also be done fairly.