Kuala Lumpur: Nominated Assemblyman Datuk Roger Chin regretted remarks by Election Commission (EC) deputy chairman Azmi Sharom on parliamentary seat distribution, warning that Malaysia was not formed on population arithmetic alone.
“It is troubling for an EC deputy chairman to frame the issue,” he said. Azmi had suggested that Sabah and Sarawak are “overrepresented” compared with more populous states such as Selangor and Terengganu in parliament.
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Chin noted that while Azmi did not explicitly state that Sabah and Sarawak were overrepresented, the implication was clear by treating electoral imbalance primarily as a matter of voter numbers.
“That framing is incomplete,” he said,
He said Sabah and Sarawak joined the federation under the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63), a negotiated constitutional settlement based on equal partnership, safeguards and balance, rather than simple majoritarian logic.
“Parliamentary representation for Sabah and Sarawak was meant to secure voice and influence, not merely mirror population size. That is why the idea of roughly one-third representation mattered, even if it is not expressly written into today’s constitutional text,” Chin said.
He warned that when senior election officials speak as if representation is merely a numbers problem, it risks recasting Malaysia as a population-weighted unitary state.
“That is why MA63 is not history. It remains unfinished constitutional business,” he said.
Azmi had said that Selangor’s 22 parliamentary seats represent about 2.9 million voters, averaging 132,000 voters per seat, compared with Sabah and Sarawak’s 65,000 to 76,000 voters per seat.
He said such disparities were constitutional and justified by geography and population density, particularly in large rural constituencies.
Both Sabah and Sarawak have made a strong case for a return to the arrangement at the formation of Malaysia in 1963 when the seats ratio in parliament assured that no changes affecting Sabah, Sarawak or Singapore could be effected without a a two-third majority.
However, after Singapore’s expulsion from the federation in 1965, its 19 seats were not distributed equally among the remaining three equal partners.
It is believed that first Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman intended to keep the seats for Brunei in the hope that it would accept his repeated invitations to join the federation, which he even made again in 1967.
However, following the Emergency Ordinance imposed after the May 1969 riots in Kuala Lumpur and the eventual stepping down of Tunku in 1972, these seats were absorbed by peninsula without any of the Sabah or Sarawak leaders protesting the move.
It left both the states at a great disadvantage as they now lacked enough numbers to oppose any move in parliament that was detrimental to the people in both states.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar recently assured both states that they would be an increase in parliamentary seats before the next election, although he could not promise it would reflect the desired one-third equity in parliament both states wanted as it would require further study.
