No one should hard sell (or oversold) the idea of recall election being the antitode or solution to the party-hopping issue. It is largely untested. In principle it may work, and I agree with the proponent to perform the 'political clinical trial' to find that out, but I should also forewarn the possible treatment failure to the targeted 'disease' -- most probably recall election is not enough, and itself is not the 'right medicine' to stop the political defections leading to the change or collapse of government. In this article, I elaborated and put forward the reasons why this is the case.
The fact is, recall election and the so-called anti-hopping law can co-exist, and they should serve different functions -- the former is more of a 'generalist' (for performance, integrity or even moral issue as the ground for recall), while the latter is a 'specialist' for preventing power-grab via party-switching. So, I am a social democrat myself, not against the recall election mechanism.
In this article, I also proposed how the current prevalently perceived anti-hopping law can be tweaked and improved to circumvent the judgment precedence set in 1992. I call it Reaffirming Mandate Law.
I maintain, any party defector/quitter should subject to automatically triggered by-election, as a democratic test, to find out if one still commands the mandate to represent the particular constituency. Recall election is just adding too many extra-rounds of qualifiers to the real test. Recall election should also be made more difficult instead of easier, to avoid being abused -- so the chances of using the recall election mechanism to beat the group of 'badasses' to 'restore' one's favourite governing coalition to power, are not high. The odds are stacking against you. I just don't want you to be disappointed in the end.
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Tindak Malaysia's remark and review of the article:
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=4504879936237267&id=205226019536035
We shall take a minor diversion from our Redelineation History Week today
Today, we examine an article written by Dr Lim Chee Han where he provided a nuanced critique about recall elections and an option in between anti party hopping law and recall elections (reaffirming elections). While we disagree with the concept of reaffirming elections, we would like to give particular focus on the current discourse on recall elections
We support Recall Elections. However, we cannot deny the few downsides of relying on this option as the pinnacle of deterrence against hopping. Firstly, a recall election process takes months and if it is used specifically for hopping, the impact of recall elections is very delayed. In the process of delay, the political scene would have changed significantly and finally the recall elections will end up preserving the mandate of the hopping politician.
Secondly, we wholeheartedly agree that recall elections being used specifically to tackle party hopping is unusual. The essence of recall elections is to allow voters to sack a politician or a leader who is underperforming or commit acts that could be deplorable by society (ill remarks, being involved in scandal). A recall elections which is unrestricted unleashes the full options for voters to sack or keep hopping politicians, underperforming leaders and scandalous representatives. A restricted version of Recall Elections as espoused by YB Azalina skews the flexibility of recall elections, the very strength of the process
Thirdly, we need to ask ourselves on how to curb the abuses of recall elections. One of the most common abuse can happen be political parties to mobilize voters to initiate petition to reverse a particular political outcome. Moreover, additional measures would be required to verify signatures (especially for the first few stages of recall process). We don't want to have a situation where paid signature industry is born in Malaysia and recall elections is to be guided by these paid signatures
A hybrid of recall elections and anti-party hopping law will serve the effective forms of deterrence to party hopping culture in Malaysia. A full appreciation of strengths of both options must be taken account. It is plain wrong to say Recall Elections is better than Anti-Party Hopping Law or vice versa
To stop party hopping, holistic measures from bottom up and top down views would be required. Single reliance on recall elections to curb party hopping as the pinnacle form of deterrence is simply misguided view
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