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238 Wong Chin Huat

Consequence of Mismatch 4: Built-in Instability of Permanent
Coalitions
Although necessitated by vote-pooling under FPTP, permanent coalitions
make Malaysian parties structurally uncompetitive, highly centralised, and
prone to factional warfare and/or electoral malpractice. In Britain, because
parties can contest in any constituency, candidate-selection can be left to party
branches. With local support, maverick politicians and those from minority
factions can continue to stand in elections. For instance, Labour leader Jeremy
Corbyn was never denied candidacy despite having de ed party whips 428
times during the 13 years his party was in government (Cowley and Stuart
2016). Beyond enabling ‘backbench revolts’ for check-and-balance, bottom-
up candidate selection keeps the parties competitive and stable in long run.
In contrast, Malaysia’s coalitions allocate constituencies to component
parties on a near-permanent basis, often based on ethnic composition. is
practice breeds parties’ complacency and is not a guarantee that the coalition
is always represented by the locally most-competitive component. Further,
because each component party can contest only in a limited number of
constituencies, the need for coordination to optimize placements gives top
leadership enormous power to dictate candidates. Often, senior leaders
parachute protégés or relatives to safe constituencies while denying dissidents
candidacy, fuelling factional warfare or internal sabotage during elections.
BN’s solutions to overcome built-in uncompetitiveness and quarrels over
constituencies were patronage for voters and politicians, malapportionment,
gerrymandering, and legislature-expansion. Structurally speaking, BN’s
continuous decline since 2008 after its peak performance in 2004 showed the
limits of these remedies (Wong 2018c, 2018a). In any case, these remedies
must not remain in the playbook if Malaysia wants real democracy after the
transition.

Consequence of Mismatch 5: Gender Imbalance and
Weak Issue-representation

FPTP has contributed to Malaysia’s failure to achieve a minimum 30 per
cent women’s representation in government. Women’s participation rates in
and after GE14—10.9 per cent of candidates, 14.4 per cent of members of
parliament, and 18 per cent of federal frontbenchers—are the highest ever,
but still appallingly low by international standards (Table 11.17). Amongst
FPTP countries, India reserves one-third of village-council chief positions for
women, rotating amongst villages in a ve-year cycle (Datla 2013), while the

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