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11

Reconsidering Malaysia’s

First-Past-the-Post Electoral System:

Malpractices and Mismatch

Wong Chin Huat

Characterised by excessive malapportionment and gerrymandering, the rst-
past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system has been central to Malaysia’s electoral
authoritarianism (Wong 2018a). e end of Barisan Nasional (National Front,
BN) rule after over 60 years and the coalition’s succession by Pakatan Harapan
(Alliance of Hope, PH) on 9 May 2018 provide a golden opportunity to
revisit and correct the malpractice FPTP introduces. However, it is important
to ask if FPTP, once cleansed of malapportionment and gerrymandering,
works for Malaysia.
One bene t of FPTP is a healthy two-party system with centripetal
competition, but neither that nor a similarly benign two-coalition
system has yet emerged in Malaysia, after fteen elections. Constituency
1
malapportionment and gerrymandering only began in 1974, with that year’s
delimitation review—but there had been no two-party or two-coalition system
for the preceding four elections, from 1955 to 1969. We should therefore
keep an open mind, recognising the possible mismatch between FPTP and
Malaysia’s ethnically divided society.
is chapter introduces the malpractices of inter-state malapportionment,
intra-state malapportionment, and gerrymandering before building a case for
mismatch and discussing four consequences: lack of a two-party system, lack
of centripetal competition and inherent uncompetitiveness, punishment of

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