By Elijah Hee
FMT
Referring to the article “Ditch race-based coalitions for a single multi-racial party” by Kenneth Lee on May 15, 2018, while he made a good point that a race-based coalition with component parties like Barisan Nasional (BN) and the defunct Pakatan Rakyat would be a recipe for disaster, I doubt if his suggestion for the current ruling Pakatan Harapan (PH) to transform into a single multi-racial party, which he proposed be called “Parti Harapan Malaysia”, would be realistic and good for the nation in the long run.
While many have called for a “two-party system”, or what the ethnic Chinese call a “two-coalition system”, such a system has revealed to have its setbacks in countries like the United States. Therefore, I favour a “multi-party system” instead.
First of all, we must realise that whether in BN or PH, component parties have their own histories and ideologies or principles, therefore they exist as separated parties for a reason.
While Umno, MCA and MIC in BN were the original founding parties of the Perikatan (the predecessor of BN) as communal parties addressing their respective ethnic groups, some component parties like Gerakan, MyPPP (formerly PPP), Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) and Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) emerged as multiracial parties on their own, and joined BN at a later stage.
On the other hand, the four component parties in PH are considerably different, While Keadilan is a rather catch-all party with members ranging from centre-left to centre-right, DAP is in principle a social democratic and democratic socialist party (which explains why their youth wing is called DAPSY – DAP Socialist Youth).
Amanah is a moderate Islamist party being a splinter party of the hardline conservative Islamist PAS, and Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (PPBM), where the new Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad comes from, is a Malay nationalist party (note that it is a splinter party of Umno) with a slightly more progressive approach than Umno i.e. PPBM accepts non-pribumi as associate members who have no voting rights in the party, though they may hold any position in the party.
Unrealistic for BN and PH to be single parties
Therefore I find it unrealistic to demand both BN and PH transform into a single party, not only due to the differences among the component parties, but also their own political interests as well.
We cannot hope to model on the two-party system in the US, since both the Democratic Party and Republican Party did not emerge from such complicated backgrounds.
After all, even such a two-party system is no guarantee in eradicating racism, since racism is still rampant in certain parts of the US, especially in the Deep South which has been the voters base of the Republicans since 1964 due to the “Southern Strategy” employed by then-presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. Since then certain politicians such as Donald Trump used racism as their platform.
While it is convenient to say that moving towards a two-party system similar to the US will eliminate the complications that arise from the component parties, I find that it would be suffocating different views and ideologies as well.
Either both parties will look “too similar” to each other and shun minorities, or both parties will get polarised as in the US in recent years.
The First-Past-The-Post electoral system
In the Malaysian context, while Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM), being a former long-time informal ally of Keadilan, has been ardently fighting for the working class, which in turn inspired Pakatan Rakyat and later PH, they fell victim to the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) electoral system which indirectly encourages “tactical voting” where voters simply vote for another party with a better chance of winning.
As a result, Dr Michael Jeyakumar Devaraj lost his Sungai Siput seat in the recent general election, after winning twice under the Keadilan banner previously (due to the informal alliance between the parties, as mentioned above).
This also explains why in the US, “progressives”, “social democrats” or “democratic socialists” such as Bernie Sanders resorted to using the Democratic Party as their platform, since they would stand no chance of winning if they simply ran as an independent or third-party candidate against the two major parties.
The FPTP electoral system, together with a two-party system, tends to be killing the voter turnout rate as well, since voters may feel that there is no effective or formidable party that genuinely represents their views.
The turnout rate for the two latest GEs exceeded 80% simply because there was a wind for change blowing – people came out to vote in hopes of replacing the BN government with a new government.
But once our country eventually settles down with a two-party system, the turnout rate will most likely drop to somewhere between 60% to 70% as in the UK, or worse, between 55% to 60% as in the US presidential elections, and not to mention that there are eligible citizens who are not registered to vote.
We cannot conveniently bash those who do not come out to vote, and those who deliberately cast a “rejected vote” (usually referred to as a “spoilt vote”), since they feel that no party or candidate truly represents them, so to them either party makes no difference.
The FPTP system does not guarantee that the number of seats will accurately reflect the support of the respective parties, even without gerrymandering and malapportionment.
Assuming that there is a three-corner fight in all constituencies, it would be theoretically possible for a party to win all constituencies with a mere 34% of votes each.
In the UK, up to 2010, while the Liberal Democrats were able to command a considerable amount of support at around a quarter, they were only able to win less than 10% of the seats, as many of their votes were “wasted” in seats that they lost to the Conservative Party and Labour Party.
After all, since 1935 no party in the UK ever obtained more than 50% of the popular votes, yet either Conservative or Labour would win the majority of seats (except on the occasions of a “hung parliament” in February 1974 and 2010).
Why the two-party system is not a good idea
And the worst case scenario – a two-party system may end up as a choice between “two rotten apples”. This is because the two major parties are likely to take their support for granted, therefore lacking “innovation” and neglecting new or minority ideas that may improve the party.
This was so in the 2016 US Presidential Election where voters were effectively left to choose between the almost equally controversial Democratic Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, since other candidates like Jill Stein from the Green Party and Gary Johnson from the Libertarian Party would have no chance of winning at all.
Supporters of Bernie Sanders were split between voting Hillary Clinton (which would be a form of tactical voting) or voting Jill Stein (who is ideologically close to Sanders).
After all, we also need to realise that the situation in Malaysia and the US are different, as the parties in the US do not maintain a very strict and “disciplined” membership.
Basically, anyone wanting to run for public office would contest in the primaries to win party grassroots support before being able to represent the party in the election, which explains why Donald Trump was able to overcome his rifts with party leaders and fellow Republican politicians and ultimately emerged victorious (it was notable that several prominent Republicans including John McCain, Mitt Romney, John Kasich, George HW Bush and George W Bush were openly against Trump during the presidential election).
If US parties had a strict party membership as in Malaysia, Donald Trump and those found joining racist organisations such as KKK would have been expelled by the Republican Party!
Yet this is not the case over there, as party membership is rather on a “self-identification” basis. Besides that, it was also notable that in the 2008 Presidential Election, Donald Trump who was a Democrat back then, had openly endorsed Republican John McCain against Democrat Barack Obama – such a situation in Malaysia would get Trump expelled by the party.
Whereas in Malaysia, election candidates are selected by the respective party leadership. As such, grassroots support, hard work, experience and qualification are no guarantee to candidacy.
Political interests and factionalism tend to be taken into account, which probably explains why several incumbent legislators such as Gan Pei Nei (Keadilan), N Surendran (Keadilan), Datuk Dr Tan Kee Kwong (Keadilan) and Cheong Chee Khing (DAP) got axed from candidacy.
After all, over the years there were also prominent political leaders in Malaysia who fell victim to factionalism and infightings, up to the extent that they either quit the party or got expelled, and very few were able to establish a successful political career later on, namely Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, Tun Dr Mahathir, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal who are successful in Keadilan, PPBM and Warisan.
Others such as Tan Sri Mohd Asri Muda and Wee Choo Keong, who have respectively left PAS and DAP, failed to establish successful careers in their venture of establishing Hizbul Muslimin (HAMIM) and the Malaysian Democratic Party (MDP).
Barisan Jemaah Islamiah (BERJASA), another PAS splinter party, also fell into near-obscurity, despite two occasions of alliance with PAS later on.
And not to forget Malacca DAP leaders such as Sim Tong Him and Goh Leong San, who after leading Malacca DAP for long, eventually quit the party after infighting with those aligned to Secretary-General Lim Guan Eng.
Whereas in the US, it would have been considerably easier for these politicians to “fight back” without quitting the party.
Therefore, in the long run, I am of the opinion that demanding PH and even BN to transform into a single multi-racial party is not the way, but we should promote a multi-party system instead.
Benefits of a multi-party system
This can be done by changing the electoral system into one which would eliminate “tactical voting”.
Political analyst Dr Wong Chin Huat has been calling for a mixed-member proportional system as in Germany, where about half of the seats are being reserved for constituencies, and the overall seat allocation would still be based on the party votes.
In such a system, each voter would actually have two votes for a legislature – one for party and one for constituency candidate.
Other than that, the Alternative Voting as in Australia may be considered as well, where voters would need to rank candidates in their constituencies, so that in case no candidate obtains more than 50% of the votes, the one with the least number of votes would be eliminated and have their votes transferred to the voters’ “second choice” candidate. This is to ensure that the ultimate winner truly represents the majority voice of the constituency.
Regardless of the two proposed electoral systems above, it would eliminate tactical voting, where voters would go ahead with voting for their favourite party or candidate, without fear of “wasting their votes” and losing out to the major parties.
After all, if no party wins more than 50% of the seats, either major party would need to form a coalition government with a minor party which ideology is considerably similar.
As a result, in Germany the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) together with their permanent ally Christian Social Union (CSU) would usually partner with the Free Democratic Party (FDP), while the Social Democratic Party (SPD) would usually partner with the Green Party.
If such a situation occurs in Malaysia, and Keadilan becomes the largest party in Parliament, they may conveniently attempt to form a coalition government with DAP, Amanah, PSM, Gerakan, Warisan, PBS, SUPP, or so on, since they are not very much different in ideology.
After all, a multi-party system also allows parties to put more effort in promoting their ideologies, instead of trying to entice voters up to the point of forgetting their own principles.
The Malaysian political climate had forced DAP to tone down their social democratic and democratic socialist appearance, in fear of being labelled as “Communist”. DAP’s long-time “Chinese dominance” makes their efforts in reaching out to the Malays difficult as well.
On the other hand, Keadilan is also facing difficulties reaching out to the Chinese community, and in terms of party membership, there are over twice more Indians than Chinese.
This explains why Barisan Alternatif, Pakatan Rakyat and now PH have been roughly similar to the race-based model of BN, where DAP would always be the de facto “MCA” in the coalition.
While Amanah opens its membership to all citizens regardless of ethnicity and religion, they are still very heavily Malay-dominated, and they still have a long way to go before they may successfully emulate the success of the National Awakening Party in Indonesia.
With a competitive multi-party system, even Keadilan, DAP and Amanah may break permanent ties and compete against each other in reaching out to different ethnic groups, while preparing to form a coalition government after election.
Therefore, instead of a single multi-racial party, why not go for a multi-party system in the future?
Elijah Hee is an FMT reader.
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