Penang has become the first state in Malaysia to appoint a three-man committee to focus on the Election Commission’s (EC) redelineation exercise in the state.

The state appointed three federal lawmakers, one each from PKR, DAP and PAS, to represent the state in engaging with the EC and various stakeholders in order to convey the need for a fair delimitation exercise.

The MPs are Mujahid Yusof Rawa of PAS,  Tanjong MP Ng Wei Aik of DAP and PKR’s Bayan Baru MP Sim Tze Tzin.

“This shows how serious Penang is about this exercise,” Mujahid, Ng and Sim said in a joint statement issued at a press conference in the Parliament lobby today.

The trio called for EC to maintain the number of seats at both federal and state levels, saying that increasing the seats would not guarantee the effectiveness of the representatives.

They also asked the EC to follow the recommendation made by a Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) on electoral reform in 2012 to ensure that constituency boundaries are drawn with proportionate representation of voters to be as close as possible with the one-man, one-vote system.

The EC has confirmed that it is pushing ahead with the redelineation process.