How introducing non-constituency seats will help Malaysia

Last week, Bersih made a call for Harapan-led states to modify their electoral systems to introduce “Non-Constituency Seats” (NCS) in their respective state assemblies.

The goal of NCS is to produce a legislative assembly that is more representative of the political orientation of the electorate as a whole, as compared to the current first-past-the-post (FPTP) system.

I have written on this before, but let’s do a quick recap by way of example in a FPTP system.

Let’s say Party A and Party B are contesting 50 assembly seats. If Party A won 51 percent of the vote in all 50 assembly seats, they would have 50 seats in the assembly (100 percent), while Party B, who won 49 percent of the vote in all seats, would have zero seats in the assembly (0 percent).

Under the NCS modification which I believe Bersih and others are proposing, the following would instead happen.

Party A will still have the 50 seats they won. The assembly, however, will add another 50 seats to the legislature, resulting in a total of 100 seats. Of these additional seats, 49 will be given to Party B, while one will be given to Party A.

Thus, the final composition of the assembly would be 51 seats for Party A, and 49 seats for Party B, thus reflecting the breakdown of support in the electorate as a whole, which was 51 percent for Party A and 49 percent for Party B, as opposed to 100 and zero respectively under FPTP.

Make every vote count

I am strongly in favour of reforms that make our legislatures more representative, and more reflective of the political realities and aspirations we face today.

The NCS proposal is but one of many possible ways forward, but there is little doubt to me that it would be a step forward, as opposed to a step in any other direction.

Malaysians, like citizens from the 86 other countries that practice a system similar to the one proposed, deserve a legislature that reflects their political views as democratically as possible.

As we can see from the example above, the FPTP system allows for legislatures that are completely out of touch with political realities. The possible disproportions are staggering, and are exacerbated by practices of gerrymandering.

Under FPTP as well, we note that in the example above, the 49 percent of the people who voted for Party B were essentially not counted in any way - their votes did not matter.

NCS works as a much fairer way to make sure that every single citizen is represented, and that every vote truly counts.

Let legislators legislate

Another advantage of NCS is that it allows representatives elected to the legislature to focus on their true job, which is to legislate.

Of course, I believe that the leaders we vote for should be responsible and accountable for our welfare.

To ensure long-term institutional health, however, we should make sure the right person is doing the right job for the right reasons.

In Malaysia, a large part of this problem is that we do not have the right to vote for the people who most affect our day-to-day lives - in this case, mayors and district officers.

These are individuals who should be responsible for things like infrastructure maintenance, the provision of key civic services and so on.

The fact that we cannot vote for these people, but only for members of the legislature, means that said elected representatives are expected by many voters to be directly responsible for matters that strictly speaking are not in their jurisdiction.

On the one hand, it’s not surprising that people look to those they elected for answers regarding governance in their daily life; on the other, it is not entirely reasonable to expect a certain type of accountability from people who do not have the appropriate authority.

A step in the right direction

The key solution to this problem is, of course, local elections.

At the same time, NCS provides the opportunity for more legislators to focus on legislating and influencing policy at a higher level.

Expecting all legislators to devote themselves full-time to the kind of constituency work that tends to ensure electability creates a bit of a vacuum, as their real jobs become somewhat neglected.

While NCS is not a magic bullet, and can give rise to different sets of political problems with regards to incentivisation, I believe the nett result of such a system will be positive.

We must look to continuously innovate so as to produce a political system that best incentivises good behaviour that benefits citizens, and de-incentivises bad or wasteful behaviour.

To this end, implementing NCS would most certainly be a step in the right direction.

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NATHANIEL TAN is very encouraged by the formation of Eliminating Deaths and Abuse in Custody Together (EDICT), a new NGO that seeks to stop deaths and abuse in police custody.- Mkini