00:17Hello and good evening. I'm Melissa Idris. Welcome to Consider This. This is the show where we want
00:22you to consider and then reconsider what you know of the news of the day. We will focus on
00:26Johor today as they prepare for the state elections. The Johor State Assembly recently introduced
00:32a significant institutional change, legislation that will allow for five appointed assembly
00:39persons to be added to the state assembly. Could this strengthen democracy? Is it a positive
00:46development or does it raise bigger questions about representation and checks and balances
00:53in Malaysia's state assemblies? Joining me on the show to help us think this through is political
00:58scientist Professor Wong Chin Huat. He's the deputy head of strategy for the Asia headquarters of the
01:04United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network at Sunway University. He's also a member
01:09of Project Sama. Chin Huat, good to have you back on the show. So we're talking about this legislation
01:14that Johor just passed allowing for up to five appointed assembly persons. Now, do you think
01:20this is a democratic innovation or is it a democratic compromise? Thank you, Melissa, for having me.
01:30Now, what we have now currently for these elections is 56 elected members. With the Constitutional
01:38Amendment Bill passed and coming in force, the government can have five more members appointed. So you would have
01:4761 of them. And the five additional members do not have an individual constituency. So in other words,
01:57they will represent statewide issues. And whether this is a good thing or bad thing, let's play into two parts.
02:05To have statewide representations is an innovation we should have because we want people who can look at
02:13the issues of a certain policy from a statewide perspective rather than being bogged down on
02:22constitution, constituencies matters. And however, how do we get this five person elected? Currently, we would not be able to
02:35have them openly elected with a separate ballots as what you would have in countries like Japan, Taiwan and Thailand.
02:45But we can actually design something for this five person to be appointed based on party mandates. However, this is
02:58not being done.
02:58So what we have now is these five members, additional members only represent the state government. So that
03:08becomes a bonuses. It would actually strengthen the chief minister, Muntri Bersaw Power, but it doesn't add on to that
03:17because it doesn't even have any requirement.
03:21Let me put this thing in context. Other than Johor, we have three other states that have appointed members.
03:28The first one is Sabah, exactly the same. They have six person. The next one is Tengganu.
03:34Tengganu is the last one before Johor is Pahang. They have five. Tengganu is the best. Tengganu has four.
03:43So you can only appoint them from among the women if you do not have even a single woman elected
03:52to the house or you appoint from among non-Muslim if you don't have even a single non-Muslim.
03:59So that's the idea to top up, to improve representations. It has criteria to be met, but not in Johor.
04:10Johor has not
04:12copied even the Tengganu one. But the Tengganu one is still not good enough because it is government bonus seats.
04:19What we should have done is to allocate these seats to the parties based on the total would share and
04:26we can even let voters to have a say.
04:30What we can do is what me and my colleagues have proposed for Penang that was specifically to improve the
04:40women representation called TWAS, top up women only additional seats.
04:46What happens is after the close of nomination, all those parties that have qualified in our normal elections, they are
04:56allowed to nominate a certain number of candidates to fill up the seats.
05:02So you have five seats, every party gets five. Then after we calculate the votes, we allocate the seats to
05:10the party based on the vote share.
05:11So then you would have statewide representation, issue based, but you also have proportionality.
05:18Okay, let's focus on Johor because of the state elections that are coming up. What you said earlier is quite
05:23interesting.
05:23You said, without certain safeguards, essentially, the additional five seats could be used to bolster the position of the Chief
05:33Minister, the Manjibasa.
05:35Talk to me about what kind of safeguards are necessary. How do we know, how would the public and the
05:41voter know that, to identify if this situation is actually happening?
05:50The current Chief Minister, the incumbent Chief Minister, has said that there will be no backdoor appointments, meaning that whoever
05:59loses in the state elections will not be appointed, will not get one of the appointed seats in the state
06:05assembly.
06:06But how do we make sure that these five top up seats are not being abused to bolster anyone's position?
06:14Now, I think in the first place that whoever appointed would come from the Chief Minister. So that itself is
06:22a problem. I do not actually have a problem if it's loser to be appointed, because that's a term called
06:29best loser.
06:30You want to make sure some of the losers are actually represented. The question here is that if it comes
06:36from the government, then of course, people would ask and say, why do you need extra people, right?
06:40But we shouldn't rule that out. What we should have is actually let that choice to go back to people.
06:47Now, what we need to do next, even let's say we have had it allocated based on woodshare, that from
06:57the state election, we still need to do one more thing.
06:59How do we let these people service? Now, Johor State Assembly is among the more hardworking one of all Malaysians'
07:08assembly. Not the most, but one of the most.
07:11And how many days, you guess, that did the State Assembly of Johor set last year?
07:22I don't know. Is it more or fewer days compared to Day 1, right?
07:27One year, we have 365 days. How many days do you think there were?
07:31Let's go with half of that, 150 days.
07:35No, even our parliament is less than that. Our parliament has less than 100 days.
07:40But the state assembly, the most hardworking one is probably three weeks. Johor last year was exactly 14 days.
07:49Exactly 14 days. So few. We have so little days for them in session because partly the state government has,
07:57the state legislature has very few power.
08:00This is because of the constitutional design. We do not, the state government basically control Islam, land, local government, town
08:10planning, welfare.
08:12And town planning and welfare are power that they share with the federal government.
08:16So we are talking about very limited position. Therefore, state assemblies, for every state assembly, every year they would pass
08:25minimum one bill.
08:27Often that's the only bill. The bill is called supply bill, which is budget, because otherwise nothing else they do.
08:33So if we are going to expand, people like to talk about having more lawmakers and so on.
08:39What do we need them for? Do we need them as welfare officers to give them the money to dish
08:45out?
08:45And if that's the case, why do we need five extra members who do not even single constituency to serve?
08:55They will serve the whole state, right? Now, what we really need to come as a package is to have
09:02select committees so that our dunes do not just work in that two or three weeks or even one weeks
09:12when the dune is in sitting.
09:15What we need is for them. What we need is for them to have committee to listen to the people.
09:21They can call stakeholders, businesses, NGOs to government officer to understand the issue better, to propose better policy, to even
09:36think about what laws can be improved and so on.
09:39Now, we need that. That's exactly when we talk about additional members.
09:43What we should have is there should be proportionally allocated to the party.
09:49There should be criteria. What people do we want it from?
09:54For example, none of the Malaysia legislature from the federal parliament to all 13 state legislature has reached the minimum
10:0630% benchmark of women representation.
10:09That's something very shameful. We can easily correct that.
10:14So, for example, for Johor, there should be a provision that if you fall short of that 30%, then the
10:21nominees to fill up this have to be women.
10:25So, for example, now you have 14 out of 56 is exactly 25%.
10:31If we have five more, then you would have 19 over 61.
10:36That's exactly just cross 30%.
10:39So, we should have that. We should have committee and not just limited to say because you add in women,
10:45therefore they are in women.
10:46You can cover many issues, not limited to women and children and family.
10:52You can also cover even issues beyond the state power.
10:56Why? For example, the state has no power to regulate education, but that doesn't mean the state cannot formulate policy
11:04to assist education.
11:06Right? So, you could have select committees on education, on healthcare, on transportation, on anything.
11:14And that's how we would improve the quality of policy making and law making.
11:19Okay. Well, let's tie it back into the Johor state elections then, Jin Huat.
11:24Johor voters are about to elect a new assembly.
11:28Beyond choosing a party when they cast their ballot, what questions should voters be asking about the institution of the
11:38state assembly itself?
11:40They should really ask what the state should like.
11:44What we need to have here is actually elected government.
11:47Now, in Malaysia, a lot of people look down at elected politicians.
11:51Actually, when you do so, you're looking down at yourself because elected representatives represent you.
11:58What we need to have is to have properly functioning elected government so that they would be in charge.
12:05We should not count on unelected institutions, whether that's civil service or something higher than civil service, to run the
12:13business for us.
12:14So, what is important here is to have proper representation.
12:20And one single thing we should do is to have a law to ensure equal allocations for each constituency.
12:31So, no constituency would be sidelined simply because the adun you have elected happen to be in the opposition.
12:41No one should be discriminated.
12:44We should have freedom of information enactment so that people would know what decisions have been made by the state
12:54government.
12:54We should have other reform.
12:59For example, our local council should be, if you do not believe in full-fledged local election, we can at
13:09least introduce party-based representation.
13:12So, there are many things that can be done.
13:14Even though the state governments have very little constitutionally enshrined power, that doesn't mean that you cannot do more.
13:22What we need to is to have trust in elected representatives, even though they may not be up to the
13:29standard, but we can always start somewhere, make them better.
13:35Chin Huat, thank you so much. Always a pleasure to have you on the show.
13:38Political scientist Professor Wong Chin Huat there.
13:41We're going to take a quick break, but we will be back with more on this topic.
13:44So, stay tuned to Consider This.
13:46We'll see you next time.
13:46Bye.
13:47Bye.
13:47Bye.
13:50Bye.
13:54Bye.
13:55Bye.
13:56Bye.
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