PRIVATE CITIZEN'S INITIATIVE ON DELINEATION FOR NEXT GE.

You would know of Tindak Malaysia who helped us with training of polling agents during the last GE. You would also have heard of P Y Wong who founded Tindak Malaysia.

The next major issue that will face us is the delineation of electoral boundaries. Without a 2/3 majority a change in the number of parliamentary seats cannot take place. However EC (SPR) can change the boundaries between seats. As an example imagine shifting Bangsar to Segambut and Brickfields to Bukit Bintang; this would render Lembah pantai a safe seat for BN. And this is a very likely scenario.

Over the last year or so Tindak Malaysia specifically P Y Wong and Ng Chak Ngoon started thinking over this issue of delineation. I was roped in about 5 months ago and I helped develop the techniques and acquire maps. As far as we are aware and disappointingly so political parties are not doing anything. Hence Tindak malaysia’s initiative becomes critical.

What we have done so far are:

(i)                  Purchase all the parliamentary seat maps from individual state SPR office. This meant having to send people to all the state capitals;

(ii)                Digitize all the maps and merge the individual parliamentary seat maps state by state into state maps. These maps contain boundaries of the individual parliamentary and DUN seats down to polling districts (daerah mengundi).

(iii)               With available data from down to individual daerah mengundi levels we can see the disparity of the numbers of voters betyween the different parliamentary seats. These can vary significantly;

(iv)              Maintaining the same number of parliamentary seats per state we then shift the individual daerah mengundis around until every parliamentary seat within each state has similar numbers of voters (the objective is plus – minus 10% of the mean);

(v)                By so doing we can achieve a fair distribution of voters for every state. My own effort in Wilayah Persekutuan resulted in a maximum difference of only 5%.

(vi)              We then produce maps with new electoral boundaries and at some stage submit to SPR as an alternative.

At the end of the day however we will still have differences in the average number of voters for the different states. Wilayah Persekutuan KL will have about 72,000. Negeri Sembilan about 65,000, Kelantan 62,000 and Pahang 55,000.

We have made contact with Selangor state who has expressed interest in the project. It would be advantageous if Selangor or any other state would take a case against SPR demanding more seats since the average in Selangor is 90,000 per seat compared to 55,000 for Pahang.

Our next step is to hold a public forum on 15^th and16th February 2013 together with Bar Council to publicise what we have done. Getting people, political parties and NGOs interested is critical.

The proposed program is roughly like this:

(i)                  Key note address by Lisa Handley of the USA who is an expert in delineation and who will speak on international standards

(ii)                Bridget Welsh who will speak on Malaysian delineation as compared to international standards

(iii)               Maybe Wong Chin Huat who will talk on consequences on the 2003 delineation.

(iv)              Then Tindak Malaysia will present the results of our present efforts in the form of maps for every state.

(v)                Other speakers will talk of human rights and voting rights, caretaker governments, a delineation commission separate from SPR.

(vi)              Tindak Malaysia will print maps and CD roms with clear simple instructions on how to design your own constituency. All you need is to know a bit of EXCEL and PHOTOSHOP.

To optimize on the efforts we need political parties to get interested so that we can help them and any other groups so that they can challenge SPR’s next delineation – this time the challenge will come with concrete alternative proposals. So far Nurul Izzah has promised she will push this along in PKR (so far they have not moved); DAP won’t talk about it and PAS isn’t doing anything. We hope for a meeting with PKR bosses soon.

Thus far all efforts have been voluntary (we have possibly 20 persons working on and off – group of civil engineers, geologists, computer nerds, accountants, etc). Purchase, digitizing and printing of maps is the main cost so far and could have amounted to about RM12,000.00 – these costs are borne by us individually; the more you buy and do the more you spend.

We have asked Selangor state to help fund the forum. They have expressed interest but we have not seen the money yet. The main cost of the forum is to bring Lisa Handley to Malaysia. The estimated cost is RM20,000.00. The rest of the forum may cost another RM20,000.00.

Hence in summary we need help in raising funds not just for this forum but also sustain the next year or so where we have to work with other parties to help them protest. I am cautiously hopeful that this forum will generate intense interest.

Hence I am appealing to you to help raise some money and also to help out in the forum.

Thanks

Regards

Toh C T

The account has just been opened by Tindak and the details are as follows-

You can invite your friends and network to donate to us for the running of the Forum.

Name: Tindakmalaysia Network Services PLT,

Account no. 1218 100 1001 9736

Alliance Bank at Aman Suria