Sabah requests for more seats

KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah government has submitted a request to the Federal Government to allow a redelineation exercise to be carried out in the state’s parliamentary seats following the increase of state seats here in 2016, says State Secretary Tan Sri Sukarti Wakiman.

In a statement, Sukarti said the application was made in light of the approval given for the proposed redelineation of state constituencies by the Sabah state legislative assembly.

Sukarti said Sabah was requesting for the exercise to be carried out based on several reasons.

The redelineation of the parliamentary constituencies in Sabah was justified as the last one was done 15 years ago – in 2003.

Furthermore, he said, the number of Sabah representatives in Parliament should appropriately be increased, in line with the state’s status and position in the Federation of Malaysia.

“Some of the parliamentary areas in Sabah are extraordinarily extensive, even surpassing the size of several states in the peninsula,” he added.

Sukarti said the redelineation was also proposed with a view to increase the effectiveness of service to the people in line with the size of the parliamentary areas.

“The state government understands that the application is in the process of review by the Election Commission.

“To this end, the delineation exercise and increase of 13 new state constituencies are expected to be tabled in Parliament simultaneously with the proposed delineation and increase of parliamentary constituencies upon completion of the study by the EC,” said Sukarti.

On Wednesday, The Star reported that Sabah amended the state constitution to increase the state seats from 60 to 73 in 2016 and the amendments had been gazetted and included in the state constitution.

However, Parliament had yet to approve it ahead of GE14, raising questions on whether the 13 new seats should be used in the next polls.

Sabah Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Seri Yahya Hussin said the state government was leaving it to the “authorities” to decide on the position of the 13 new state seats that were gazetted but not yet passed by Parliament.

“The state government will respect the decision by the authorities on the matter,” he added.

Another Deputy Chief Minister, Datuk Raymond Tan, believed that the amendments would only become valid once Parliament approved them.