Time to crack the head over constituency de-limitation to be fair to taxpayers

[superadmin]

RE-DELINEATION and gerrymandering were much talked about when Pakatan Harapan (PH) was in the Opposition but one wonders why after forming the Federal government, there are no efforts to get things right.

To provide some background to the uninitiated, re-delineation (according to TindakMalaysia) is “a constitutional process in delimiting electoral boundaries to ensure electors (voters during elections) receive fair representation of their voting preferences.”

Sensing the potential re-delineation exercise that could have taken place in 2011 (for Peninsular Malaysia), volunteers of Tindak Malaysia, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) founded in 2008, spent time and resources to learn up re-delineation, worked on proposals for alternative fair electoral boundaries and some without any knowledge even attended re-delineation objector training.

From the beginning, Tindak Malaysia realised that malapportionment was undermining fairness in the electoral process. This is the result of constitutional amendments of the past and poor voter education on the process.

“It is the outright manipulation of election boundaries (either of creation of seats or redrawing of existing seats) to give an upper hand for one political party over the others,” said its director Danesh Chacko. “Tindak is deepening and educating the public, politicians and the EC (Election Commission) on how to institute fair boundaries.”

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