Have recall elections to stop MPs from switching sides, Bersih tells govt

THE Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections (Bersih) has expressed trepidation at the recent moves by four Bersatu MPs to publicly cite lack of constituency development funds (CDF) as a primary reason to declare support for Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim against the wishes of their party.

The reform organisation said that its position, echoed by various civil society groups, is that CDF must be given equally to all MPs irrespective of their support for or against the government of the day.

The current government ought to do better than previous ones that had withheld CDF allocations from opposition and independent MPs.

In a statement, it said that the crux of the problem is twofold – the inefficacy of the existing anti-hopping law (AHL) and the weaponization of CDF as a bargaining chip.

Bersih said that it believes there are three options to manage party-hopping.

“Firstly, there can be a bipartisan effort to tighten the anti-hopping law to cover existing loopholes, but this will erode individual MPs’ autonomy to vote according to their conscience and instead have to toe the party line or be sacked and lose their seats,” it said.

“Secondly, Bersih’s preferred solution is that the government should consider implementing a recall election to apply to those who switch allegiance without leaving their parties.

“This mechanism is used in countries like Taiwan and the United States where recall election returns the mandate to the rakyat to declare whether or not a seat should be vacated after an elected representative switched allegiance for/against a prime minister.”

Unlike current anti-hopping laws at federal or state level, which give either the speaker or the state assembly the power to determine seat vacancy, recall elections empower a constituency’s voters to initiate a petition to either recall or keep their representatives, although this comes with some financial implications, it explained.

The third option is for the country to consider introducing proportional representation (PR), either fully or partially, as a new (or mixed) electoral system.

According to Bersih, in the PR system, the people vote for a party, and seats are allotted to parties according to their vote share. This makes it clear once and for all that the seat belongs to the party, not individual MPs.

On CDF, Bersih recommended the following two steps:

First, institutionalise CDF allocation by law to give equal allocation so that it is no longer up to the discretion (“budi bicara”) of the prime minister of the day.

“Bersih supports the call by the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas) which has urged the government to codify CDF allocation to stabilise politics in Malaysia as well as to level the playing field,” it said.

Second, in the long term, CDF should be run on its own or via an elected local government as constituency development is not supposed to be an MP’s job, which should be to focus on national issues and debate law and major policies by the government of the day.

Four Bersatu MPs have over the past month declared their backing for Anwar, stressing that they were doing so to help their constituents, and help enable much-needed development and funding for their respective areas.

They are Kuala Kangsar MP Datuk Iskandar Dzulkarnain Abdul Khalid, Labuan MP Datuk Suhaili Abdul Rahman, Jeli MP Zahari Kechik, and Gua Musang MP Mohd Azizi Abu Naim.

The Bersatu disciplinary board had suspended Iskandar and Suhaili for four and six years respectively on grounds that the duo had breached the party’s constitution by their actions. – The Vibes, November 15, 2023