BN victory or EC sorcery?

By Terence Netto. Published by Malaysiakini on 7 May 2013.

Malaysian voters, who turned out to discharge their civic obligation in unprecedented numbers on May 5 - an astonishing 85 percent whereas the previous turnout had been 76 percent - are now asked to believe that 5.6 million ballots for Pakatan Rakyat could garner only 89 parliamentary seats.

By contrast, the 5.2 million votes for BN have netted it 133 seats in Parliament's lower chamber. And we are asked to regard this sorcery with a straight face.

And why not!?

After all, we have been asked, in the last 15 years of our political history, to believe in the authenticity of astounding reversals in the public image of figures that have run afoul of the powers-that-be.

These reversals - their suddenness, the shock they cause and the nature of the obloquy the targets are subjected to - have paved the way to the point where the people are asked to believe in official versions of events (and even non-events) that recall the mindset behind a line from a famous Hollywood movie: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Well, at least myth-making in Malaysian politics is open-sourced in its inspiration, taking its cues from prototypes ranging from the baleful Dr Goebbels to the benign John Ford.

Thus, in the next several weeks, the sheer disparity of a 5.6 million gross of the total vote, from an astonishing 85 percent voter turnout (11 million votes were cast), having yielded only 89 seats to Pakatan whereas the 5.2 million take of the BN's has afforded them 133 seats is going to be the focus of BN's capacity for fable generation to transform the incredible into the believable.

Crass gerrymandering

True, ours is a system where the weightage given to rural constituencies is such that one vote in a seat like Gua Musang, in Kelantan, is worth three in a place like Kapar in Selangor.

The BN tends to do well in rural seats more than in urban ones and so enjoys an advantage over the urban-popular opposition.

But this is not enough to justify the upshot of BN's 133-seat collection on a 5.2 million take of the total vote when compared to an 89-seat haul from a 5.6 million gross by Pakatan Rakyat.

Though this constitutionally-mandated apportionment of the more-weightage-to rural-seats rule has been distorted under Umno-BN's rule to bolster its electoral prospects, the scope of this skewering is not so bad as to sustain credibility in lopsided hauls that make a farce of the one-man-one-vote tenet of democratic choice.

The currency and stock markets have surged on the back of news of the BN victory, and the government can be expected to leverage on that good news. But elsewhere, there is a mood of somnolence that suggests this is one result that reeks of the myth-making of ‘Malaysia Boleh'.

It is a mood that says ‘tak boleh' (‘no go') to so immanent a farce.

Read more here: http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/229350