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The Johor State Assembly recently introduced a significant institutional change: legislation that will allow for 5 appointed assemblypersons to be added to the state assembly. Is this a democratic innovation or a democratic compromise? And as Johor heads into elections, what should voters instead be demanding about how their state assembly actually functions? On this episode of #ConsiderThis Melisa Idris speaks with political scientist Professor Wong Chin Huat, Deputy Head of Strategy for the Asia Headquarters of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network at Sunway University, and Member of Projek SAMA.
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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.
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