FEBRUARY 9 — Sabah Women’s Action Resource Group (Sawo) calls upon the Sabah State Government to convert Sabah’s current nominated seats into "Top-Up Women-Only Additional Seats” (TWOAS). If 18 or less women state assemblypersons (ADUNs) are elected in the next state elections, then all six nominated seats must be filled with women pre-nominated by various parties.

It is unacceptable that only seven out of 73 elected ADUNs (9.6%) in Sabah are women. The world has set a target of having a minimum 30 per cent of women in the legislature since 1995. This failure contracts Sabah’s regional identity as a diverse, open and progressive society.

If Sabah is a country, then we would rank 168th in the world on women’s parliamentary representation. We would be exactly on par with Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) in Southern Africa which also has just seven women in their 73-member parliament.

Sawo calls upon Chief Minister Datuk Seri Panglima Haji Hajiji Noor to take a bold step to move Sabah closer to New Zealand, (with 48.3% women MPs), instead of emulating Swaziland. After the last Sabah State Election, Sawo had urged Chief Minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Mohd Noor to appoint the six women best losers as the nominated members to remedy the gender imbalance in the State Legislative Assembly (DUN) of Sabah.

If DSP Hajiji had heeded Sawo’s suggestion, we would have 13 women ADUNs out of a new total of 79 (16.5%). (See chart) Disappointingly, only one woman was appointed as nominated ADUN, raising women percentage marginally to only 8/79 or 10.1 per cent.

If 22 women ADUNs are elected, then 30 per cent is attained without any top-up. If only 21 are elected, we need to top it up with two women nominated ADUNs to reach the goal. In the event of only 20 or 19 women are elected, then 3 or 5 top-up seats would need to be filled respectively. If 18 women ADUNs are elected, then adding six more women will meet the 30 per cent target immediately. If we have less than 18 women elected ADUNs, topping up with six women cannot attain 30 per cent but it can at least close the gap.

SAWO calls upon all parties, MPS and ADUNs in Sabah, especially the four women MPs; YB Noorita Sual (Tenom), YB Datuk Christina Liew (Tawau), YB Vivian Wong (Sandakan) and YB Isnaraissah Munirah Majilis and the six women ADUNs YB Jannie Lasimbang, YB Flovia Ng,

YB Datuk Julita Mojungki, YB Norazlinah Arif, YB Rina Jainal to support and advocate for the adoption of TWOAS system for Sabah’s six nominated seats. Women under-representation is not because we lack women talents, when we have more women than men amongst graduates. What we really lack is retiring male incumbents, who cannot be removed by party leadership even if they have lost their vigour and relevance.

In the next state election, parties can nominate a list of six TWOAS candidates for voters to consider when casting their votes for constituency ADUNs. — Picture by Hari Anggara

Top-up seats for women is nothing new in Malaysia. Under PAS, Terengganu changed its state constitution in 2003 to allow for appointing of up to four women or non-Muslim nominated ADUNs if no women or non-Muslim were elected. Sabah must do better than Terengganu and Gagasan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) must do better than PAS. Currently, Article 14(1)(c) Sabah’s State Constitution provides no criteria for nominated seats, allowing for abuse.

For example, Jaffary Waliam who was appointed as nominated ADUN in 2018 quit his party PKR in February 2020, shied away from facing voters’ verdict in September 2020 yet got reappointed as nominated ADUN in October. To close the door for abuse, no amendment is needed. Sabah DUN just needs to pass an enactment to restrict and detail the appointment of nominated ADUNs as a tool to attain 30 per cent women representation, making them "Top-up Women-Only Additional Seats” (TWOAS).

To further inclusivity and cover for intersectionality, the enactment can further enforce another layer of quota on TWOAS, that a certain number of nominated seats must be occupied by women who are also youth, persons with disabilities, members of unrepresented native groups or single mothers. But even Terengganu’s women and minority top-up seats have a major flaw, the appointees are to be decided exclusively by the state government. Hence, the top-up seats are also "government’s bonus seats’’ as in Sabah.

Sawo believes that even top-up women representatives should be chosen by the people and come from both government and opposition parties. Through TWOAS, Penang has found a simple solution, which Sabah can modify and adopt. In the next state election, parties can nominate a list of six TWOAS candidates for voters to consider when casting their votes for constituency ADUNs.

If less than 22 women are elected, the necessary 2-6 slots of TWOAS would be shared by the parties based on their vote share. If any TWOAS representative jumps to another party, the seat will be filled by the next candidate from the same party, hence, immune from party-hopping by the likes of Jaffary Waliam. This would encourage parties to invite credible women leaders to stand as TWOAS candidates. Sabahans can also reject parties that put up bad TWOAS candidates in their ADUN votes.

TWOAS is akin to a Closed-List Proportional Representation (CLPR) system, which can effectively transform our broken electoral system plagued by party-hopping and partisan redelineation into a Mixed Member Majoritarian (MMM) system, as explained in the Star article titled "TWOAS: A bold political experiment” published on February 7 (Sunday, page 18). Normally combining the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) electoral system and CLPR, MMM is used in nearly 20 countries including Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines. While voters get two ballots in the standard MMM, Sabahans will have only one ballot but it would be counted for the second time if TWOAS need to be filled.

If Sabah’s next state election returns the same outcome as the one in last September, only six women ADUNs elected, and both Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) and Warisan-Plus both won 43 per cent of votes, while the remaining votes are fragmented, then six TWOAS seats need to be filled and GRS and Warisan-Plus will get three seats each.

While Penang is the pioneering state for TWOAS and expects to pass the state constitutional amendment and enactment by the end of 2021, Sabah can catch up and even become the first state to implement TWOAS. This is because Sabah needs no constitutional amendment, just an enactment for TWOAS.

We hope DSP Hajiji would make TWOAS one of his legacies for Sabah. If he chooses to ignore half of Sabahans, then opposition parties must adopt TWOAS in their manifesto and let the Sabahans decide whether nominated seats should still be filled up by politicians who dared not to face voters like Jaffary Waliam and AliAkbar Gulasan of PAS.

*This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.