The Election Commission’s (EC) controversial constituency redelineation report passed by the Dewan Rakyat yesterday has been gazetted into law.

Formally known as the Federal Constitution (Delimitation of Constituencies) (State of Malaya) Order 2018, the order dated yesterday states that it comes into effect today.

“The recommendations contained in the report of the Election Commission dated March 6, 2018, shall have effect from the date of the coming into operation of this order,” says the order, which appeared in the Federal Gazette today.

The EC’s proposal was passed yesterday evening by the Dewan Rakyat with a vote of 129 for and 80 against.

This was done despite a protest (below) outside Parliament by civil society representatives concerned that the new boundaries would exacerbate existing malapportionment and gerrymandering.

However, the redelineation did not affect Sabah despite the EC’s proposal to redraw its boundaries too. The Sabah government had demanded that Putrajaya table the EC’s redelineation report for Sabah in the Dewan Rakyat too.

Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak had defended the redelineation exercise claiming that the new boundaries would not “favour certain parties”.

On the other hand, an analysis by Malaysiakini found that least 14 parliamentary constituencies and many more state constituencies would see severe changes in demography under the new boundaries.

If these boundaries had been used in Selangor during the 13th general election, PAS would have lost four state seats and PKR two.

Those concerned about whether their constituency had been affected by the redelineation can use Malaysiakini’s free redelineation checker to find out.