Title: Does Malaysia need a pure FPTP system? – Electoral system in Post-Transition Malaysia
Speaker: WONG Chin Huat (Professor, Sunway University, Malaysia / Visiting Research Scholar, CSEAS, Kyoto University)
Abstract: This is a continuing conversation on whether Malaysia should continue with its First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) electoral system after its transition in 2018. In response to a radical proposal in 2020 by the new government’s Electoral Reform Committee (ERC) to replace FPTP with Closed List Proportional Representation (CLPR), Prof Horowitz convincingly warns that such a shift may weaken Malaysia democracy in ethnic politics, government formation and even proportionality (depending on the threshold and magnitude). I argue that the real debate is not about a wholesale replacement of FPTP but about a dilution of FPTP with Closed List Proportional Representation (CLPR) as in Japan’s Mixed Majoritarian System (MMM). Unpacking the problems of FPTP malpractices in Malaysia, this presentation offers a detailed design of MMM with simulation analysis. It argues that the proposed MMM may benefit Malaysia in six ways: curbing interstate malapportionment, preventing a new and monoethnic one-coalition dominance, enabling non-communal parties, reducing inter-party antagonism, increasing women’s representation and remedying party-hopping by lawmakers.
Bio: Wong Chin Huat is an Essex-trained political science professor and deputy head (strategy) of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) Asia Headquarters at Sunway University, Malaysia. His research interests cover electoral system, party system, parliamentary democracy and federalism. He has offered institutionalist accounts for the 2018 transition, the 2020 backsliding (Sheraton Move), and fluid multipartism since 2020 in both academic and popular writings. From 2018 to 2020, he was the cluster leader for electoral system and constituency delimitation in the Government’s Electoral Reform Committee (ERC). His proposed solution not adopted by the ERC was the MMM model (with some modifications) in this presentation.
