Lau (second left) together with (from left) Sih, Dr Sim, Ting and Tan holding up the campaign posters during the press conference.
KUCHING: SUPP is running a campaign ‘Sarawakians Want Electoral Fairness’ to push for a fairer electoral system.
Its Bawang Assan branch chairman Robert Lau said the Election Commission (EC) could have delivered a better job in its recent proposal to increase the state constituencies from 71 to 82.
“As of now, you can see that the distribution of constituencies is very skewed to the advantage of the rural areas against the urban ones. We believe that this system should be redressed.
“Basically under our Malayan Constitution when we first went into this election system, the law provided for a weightage of difference of 15 per cent between rural and urban. By 1962, the Constitution was amended to allow for one-to-two ratio difference; so the rural constituencies could have one voter or one YB (people’s representative) while for the urban area, you could only have like 1,000 to 2,000 difference.
“By 1973, this guideline was done away with. So there is no formula as to what is the difference there can be by 1973. So when the law still said weightage in favour of the rural areas, we are saying that now it has gone too far. The weightage has already gone to one-to-five now,” he told a press conference after the party’s Central Working Committee (CWC) meeting here yesterday.
Lau said the smallest constituency had 6,340 votes as proposed in Gedong, while that with the most number of votes would be Pelawan with 31,388.
“This is one vote to five. We believe that this system should be relooked at.”
The SUPP had suggested that things had changed over the past 50 years, although the EC had explained that rural areas needed more funding, hence the need for more elected representatives.
“Fifty-two years have passed, the rural areas have also developed. Development no longer comes solely from the YBs. It comes from targeting more development funding to the rural areas, that we all support.
“They (rural areas) need more funding and they will get it. Still, that does not mean that they need to have more say in terms of elected representatives. So in SUPP, we believe that this political power – as in election – should have a fairer system.
“We are saying that it could be done better (and) fairer.”
Lau reiterated that the commission should address the weightage issue as to the justification of the urban and rural divide.
“Should the discrepancy be so much? We are trying to get the EC to look through the system, and hope the system could be better.”
On the campaign, Lau said the signature forms could be downloaded via SUPP’s website www.supp.org.my or its Facebook page, adding that anyone could sign and return them to the party’s secretariat here.
“We are going out to people of Sarawak to support our signature campaign. We have done our paperwork. Get the form, sign it, scan it, email it back to us, or fax it to our headquarters.
“We want to compile this to say: ‘Yes, this is the say of Sarawakians’,” he said, reminding that the signatures must reach SUPP by Feb 4 when the objection period ends.
SUPP president Senator Datuk Dr Sim Kui Hian, secretary-general Datuk Sebastian Ting and deputy secretaries-general Sih Hua Tong and Tan Joo Phoi also attended the press conference.