COMMENT Very recently, rumour has it that Pakatan Rakyat politicians are being lobbied to support a proposal on increasing the number of constituencies, and that at least some are likely to be persuaded to go along with it.
 
While Pakatan politicians being lobbied is not at all surprising, the part about them being agreeable to it certainly is.
 
The first general election in the Federation of Malaya, as peninsular Malaysia was then known, was held in 1959.
 
The Alliance, the forerunner of Barisan Nasional (BN), won it with a majority exceeding two-thirds, which enabled them to amend the constitution.
 
And amend the constitution they did. These amendments would enable them to hold on to power eternally.
 
Among the most important changes was the removal of three clauses in Article 116 which defined how constituencies had to be nearly equal in voter population and how deviation from the average size of constituencies must not exceed 15 percent.
 
With the removal of these constraints, constituency sizes can now be solely decided by the Election Commission (EC).
 
PM has final say on polling boundaries
 
At the same time, the 13th Schedule was introduced, ostensibly to spell out the procedure for constituency delimitation but its most significant effect and hidden in the verbiage, was the transfer of the final say on constituency delimitation to the prime minister.
 
Thus, as soon as the Alliance came into power, they set about to retain power forever by putting the power of unbridled constituency size variation in the hands of the prime minister.  
 
The polls setback for BN in 2008 when they won only 63 percent of the seats in parliament was totally unexpected, especially when they had won 90 percent of the seats in the previous elections, an all-time record even in BN’s illustrious election history.
 
Now, after yet another and even more serious election setback, despite having tried everything else to reverse the trend of declining support, BN’s only viable legal option would be to convert their strongholds into even smaller and therefore more numerous constituencies.
 
Unfortunately for them, they cannot do it by themselves. With their reduced number in parliament, cooperation from the opposition is now necessary.
 
For the number of parliamentary constituencies to increase, the constitution has to be amended and this requires the support of at least two thirds of the members of parliament.
 
Hence the rumour of BN lobbying for support from the opposition is not surprising. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
 
What would be surprising, though, would be the opposition going along with it.
 
Sowing suspicion among Pakatan partners
 
This leads to one big question which remains unanswered: Why would Pakatan agree to any increase in constituencies when obviously anything that BN proposes must surely benefit BN and therefore detrimental to the opposition coalition?
 
An election is a zero-sum game; the gain of one party must be at the expense of the other.
 
The only answer to this question must surely be that BN have approached the Pakatan component parties individually.
 
In current Pakatan power-sharing agreement, PAS contests in Malay-majority constituencies, DAP in non-Malay, and PKR in the remaining, where Malays and non-Malays are about equal in number.
 
Thus, could BN have quietly gone to each of the Pakatan component parties offering to carve out seats in favour of each of them? This not only secures their individual support for seat increase but at the same time, sows suspicion among the Pakatan partners.
 
Could this be the real underlying reason for the present squabble between PAS and DAP, ostensibly over a host of issues ranging from hudud law to local council elections?
 
It has to be borne in mind that no matter what BN promises Pakatan privately, that would be legally unenforceable.
 
On the other hand, a vote in parliament or a state assembly is.
 
Sarawak redelineation a classic example
 
Once Pakatan support or enough Pakatan MPs support the increase in the number of parliamentary constituencies in any state, it is entirely up to the EC to decide where the extra seats would go.
 
How BN – through the EC - can use any additional constituencies is amply illustrated in the current constituency redelineation in Sarawak.
 
Instead of redrawing constituency boundaries to correct or temper the existing inequality in the number of voters between constituencies, BN-held constituencies which are already too small are divided into even smaller and therefore more numerous BN-favourable constituencies.
 
At the same time, constituencies held by the opposition which already far too large are allowed to grow even larger. The net effect is to strenghten BN’s political stranglehold on the state.
 
Under the present circumstances, the bottom line is that any increase in the number of constituencies will only benefit BN, to the detriment of the opposition.
 
There is still one more possible scenario- individual MPs cross the floor to vote with BN, in the likes of what Hee Yit Foong did in Perak.
 
Would Malaysians continue to be pliant enough to do nothing in the face of such treachery?
 

NG CHAK NGOON is a retiree, but remains an activist with Tindak Malaysia, the political-social-economic forum that works to educate Malaysians.