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Post by greenhert on Apr 30, 2018 10:54:45 GMT
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john07
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Post by john07 on May 2, 2018 23:42:44 GMT
Sorry to nitpick, but having constituencies of vastly different sizes is nothing to do with gerrymandering. That is called malapportionment. Gerrymandered constituencies are often meticulously distributed in terms of size of electorate. |
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Post by greenhert on May 2, 2018 23:56:13 GMT
Deliberately allowing continued malapportionment of constituencies, especially with such ridiculous disparities, can be considered a form of gerrymandering. Just ask the people of Queensland, Australia.
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Post by Andrew_S on May 3, 2018 1:48:27 GMT
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john07
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Post by john07 on May 3, 2018 13:07:47 GMT
Deliberately allowing continued malapportionment of constituencies, especially with such ridiculous disparities, can be considered a form of gerrymandering. Just ask the people of Queensland, Australia. The point is that gerrymandering is next to impossible to legislate against while malapportionment can be stopped by use of a maximum range for different constituency/division sizes. For many years, the UK had some malapportionment issues as urban areas tended to lose population (and electorate) while suburban and some rural areas showed increases. That tended to favour Labour which was the predominant urban party. Hence Labour 'won' the February 1974 election with fewer votes to the Conservatives. Earlier elections favoured the Conservatives because of the tendency of Labour to pile up huge majorities in certain seats. The Conservatives got an overall majority in the 1951 election despite having 200,000 votes fewer than Labour. Neither of those factors applies to that extent now. Gerrymandering usually involves having constituencies of ridiculous shapes to either concentrate support for one party in a seat to ensure success or to spread support between two or more seats to win them all. It all depends on the situation on the ground. The term gerrymander was coined after the Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry, devised a map in which one division resembled a salamander. I suspect that the Malaysian government would employ either tactic to stay in power. |
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Post by BossMan on May 9, 2018 18:11:13 GMT
Looks like Barisan National may have lost their majority.
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Georg Ebner
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Post by Georg Ebner on May 9, 2018 21:48:55 GMT
Looks like Barisan National may have lost their majority. Even more - the 4 parties of PH have won 113/222. Most remarkable was perhaps, that the Anti-BN-tendency was strong enough for lonely PAS to survive (with 18 seats). |
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Post by greenhert on May 9, 2018 22:21:50 GMT
At long last-I was wondering when BN would ever leave office in Malaysia after (mis)ruling for so long.
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Georg Ebner
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Post by Georg Ebner on May 10, 2018 0:10:10 GMT
At long last-I was wondering when BN would ever leave office in Malaysia after (mis)ruling for so long. A sudden coup is unlikely, but not impossible - the PRC wouldn't oppose a dictatorship, nor Duherte, nor Thailand. |
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Georg Ebner
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Post by Georg Ebner on May 10, 2018 0:11:28 GMT
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Post by tiberius on May 10, 2018 0:15:56 GMT
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Post by greenhert on May 10, 2018 19:35:05 GMT
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Post by markgoodair on May 10, 2018 20:15:30 GMT
It's to be hoped that now the opposition have taken power for the first time ever they introduce electoral reform most notably by getting rid of the gerrymenadered constituencies.
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john07
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Post by john07 on May 11, 2018 11:28:26 GMT
This election has a strange look to it with the victorious opposition being led by the 92 year old former Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, who has pledged to hand over, within two years, to his former Deputy Anwar Ibrahim who is currently in jail on trumped up sodomy charges. Those charges were first brought when Mahathir was prime minister after he sacked Anwar.
Anwar has been in and out of jail for many years and has won appeals only to be re-convicted whenever he looked a threat to the (former) ruling Barisan Nasional. The first acts of the new government will be to put through a Royal Pardon for Anwar.
The defeated ruling alliance is centre-right and largely represents the interests of the majority Bumiputera population (ethnic Malays and indigenous people). The biggest element was UMNO (Bumiputera) along with the Malay Chinese Association(MCI) and the Malay Indian Congress (MIC). This alliance helped secure in dependence under Tunku Abdul Rahman and has ruled ever since until this year. The government pursued a policy of positive discrimination in favour of the Bumiputera. As a result the whole state apparatus is staffed by ethnic Malays who also get priority for University education.
Meanwhile the business sector is dominated by ethic Chinese. With the Chinese and Indian population turning increasingly away from the MCI and the MIC towards the opposition centre left. This leads to a paradoxical situation where the Bumiptera who dominate the state sector largely voting for the centre right while the Chinese who make up most of the business sector largely vote centre left.
The Pakatan Harapan coalition is something of a ragbag of four former opposition parties:
The Democratic Action Party which came out of the ashes of the Peoples Action Party (who have ruled Singapore since independence). They are centre left and broadly social democratic with a lot of support from the Chinese community.
The Peoples Justice Party of Anwar Ibrahim who are centrists and have support in the large cities and urban areas and push a anti-corruption agenda and wish to end the ethnic approach to poverty eradication.
The National Trust Party, formerly the Malay Workers Party, who can be best described as progressive Islamists.
Malaysian United Indigenous Party led by Mahathir Mohamad.
It will be interesting to see how this all works out in practice!
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