DAP today questioned whether the Election Commission’s (EC) decision not to increase parliamentary seats in Sarawak is an attempt to bulldoze through the delimitation exercise to increase state seats before the next state election.

Serdang MP Ong Kian Ming questioned the rationale behind the EC move to increase the number of state seats but without increasing parliamentary seats.

He rationalised that if the increase in the voting population was used to justify the increase in state seats, the same rationale should be applied to parliamentary seats as well.

“One cannot help but suspect that the real reason why there were no parliamentary seats added is because this would require a constitutional amendment at the parliamentary level where the BN does not possess a two-thirds majority,” he said in a statement today.

“If new parliamentary seats were proposed, then the whole Sarawak delimitation exercise may be delayed because it may get stuck at the parliamentary level.”

The EC on Wednesday had proposed to increase the number of state seats in Sarawak by 11, from the current 71 to 82.

Meanwhile, Ong pointed out that with the exception of the 1968 and 1977 delimitation exercises, both parliamentary and state seats were added in the 1986, 1996 and 2005 Sarawak delimitation exercises.

The DAP parliamentarian said the non-increase in the number of parliamentary seats was a clear indication that the EC was not complying with democratic principles, but was instead bowing to political expediency.

“This shows the non-independence of the Election Commission and its failure to produce an independent, fair and transparent delimitation exercise,” Ong said.

Electoral watchdog Bersih on Tuesday said the EC’s redelineation maps for the Sarawak election were incomplete .

Bersih said the maps do not detail the borders of the voting areas, thereby causing confusion.