Snail Pace Reforms First Year Assessment Of Govt

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The Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections (Bersih) congratulates the unity government for some of the institutional reforms carried out in its first year and urges for more as promised by the respective coalitions and parties in the government, in particularly Pakatan Harapan and BN.
We opined that a post-election coalition government should not be an excuse to abandon all reform promises made in the two coalitions’ manifestos, especially given the fact that:
a) There are four major shared promises in both BN and Harapan’s manifestos that have not been fully implemented
b) Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim himself was the leader of the Harapan coalition at the time these promises were made to voters
Specifically on electoral and institutional reforms, our overall assessment is that while the unity government has made commendable progress in some areas such as empowering parliamentary special select committees (PSSCs), their performance is below expectations.
Malaysian voters were promised these reforms in their election manifestos just one year ago, and progress has been at a snail’s pace.
Pakatan Harapan chairperson Anwar Ibrahim at the launch of his coalition’s manifesto dubbed ‘Kita Boleh', Nov 2, 2022The prime minister must expedite these reforms. For the four overlapping reforms promised by both BN and Harapan, there is no excuse to delay their implementation and a clear timeline must be spelt out by Anwar.
The four overlapping reforms are:
i) Separation of power for the public prosecutor and attorney general
ii) Reform of the public appointment process vetted by a special parliamentary committee
iii) Introduce a political funding act
iv) Devolution of power from federal to state
We acknowledge and applaud that three reform pledges are currently in progress, i.e. separation of attorney general and public prosecutor, parliamentary service act, and government procurement act, but a clear timeline for implementation has yet to be announced by the prime minister.
The unity government has also been largely silent on several unfulfilled promises, which include:
Introducing a 10-year term limit for prime ministers and chief ministers/menteris besar
Legislating a Fixed Parliament Term Act
Resolving extreme malapportionment by stipulating a clear 30 percent deviation limit from the state average size
Placing key appointments such as election commissioners, the public prosecutor, the MACC chief, and others to be reviewed by the Parliament select committee
Introducing absentee ballots for voters outside constituencies, especially from Sabah and Sarawak who are living in Peninsular Malaysia, and vice versa
Outstanding reform pledges
Two major reform promises have been broken by the unity government: equitable constituency development fund (CDF) irrespective of the MPs being pro-government or opposition; and repeal of draconian laws such as the Sedition Act and the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 (Sosma).
The home minister even defended the existence or deployment of these archaic acts, despite years of campaigning against them.
On CDF, the Madani government ought to do better than previous governments who withheld CDF allocation from opposition and independent MPs.
We urge Anwar to make efforts to deliver, with a clear timeline and adequate resources, these outstanding reform pledges:
1. Enactment of a Parliamentary Services Act
2. Enactment of a Political Financing Act
3. Enactment of the amendment to the Election Offences Act
4. Constitutional amendment to effect a 10-year tenure limit for the prime minister
5. Enactment of a Fixed-Term Parliament Act
6. Separation of the role of the attorney general and public prosecutor
7. Transparency and parliamentary oversight in the appointment of key public officers
8. Review by a parliamentary committee of the Sedition Act 1948, Official Secrets Act 1972, Communication and Multimedia Act 1998, Printing Press and Publication Act 1984, Universities and University Colleges Act 1971, and Sosma
9. A parliamentary act to provide for equitable CDF for all parliamentarians
10. Recognition and empowerment of Perikatan Nasional’s shadow cabinet with allowance, research officers, and access to ministry information
11. Amend the 13th Schedule of the Federal Constitution to limit deviation from the state average in the number of electors to no more than 30 percent to address the problem of super malapportionment that exists currently
12. To form a task force compromising the Election Commission, PSSC, relevant experts, and civil society to study the implementation of absentee voting for out-of-region (Sabah and Sarawak) and out-of-state voters
Using our matrix to evaluate the unity government’s performance on electoral and institutional reforms, it scored 11 out of a possible 51 points or 21.6 percent in its first year. Please refer to the appendix below.
Although the unity government fell short of meeting expectations, Bersih will continue to engage with the government, Parliament, and relevant stakeholders to advocate for the reforms, as well as to monitor and check and balance the progress.
We are cognisant that the government is likely to have another four years to fully fulfil their election promises and that any enactment or amendment to legislation requires time for consultation, drafting, and tabling and it is our hope that we will see the fulfilment of more reforms.
-Mkini
BERSIH works towards clean and fair elections, independent of any political party, while scrutinising the democratic institutions that are necessary for Malaysia’s political stability.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.

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