The Seremban By‑Election of 19 November 1983 and its Implications for Malaysian Politics

Abstract

With an electorate of 60,899 in 1983, comprising 37,704 (61.9 per cent), 13,421 Malays (22.0 per cent), 9,453 Indians (15.5 per cent), and 821 Others (1.3 per cent), Seremban, the capital of the state of Negri Sembilan, may be considered one of the twenty-two Chinese-majority parliamentary constituencies in Peninsular Malaysia.1 Notwithstanding the presence of a business and professional community concentrated in the vicinity of the town and its centre, the majority of the Seremban constituency's voters are poor. Many of them are small farmers, petty traders, wayside hawkers, manual labourers, shop assistants, rubber tappers, clerks, and such, residing in new villages such as Rahang and Rasah, or the rubber estates and rural areas such as Sungei Ujong and Terentang.2 Since 1959, when general elections were introduced in independent Malaya (Malaysia from 1963), Seremban has voted for the opposition in four out of six general elections. In 1959, Chin See Yin, a former Association (MCA) member, contesting as an independent, won the seat. The MCA, however, recaptured it in 1964 when Quek Kai Dong was elected Member of Parliament (MP). In 1969, Dr Chen Man Hin, the National Chairman of the Democratic Action Party (DAP) defeated the MCA's Wong Seng Chow to win the seat, and retained it for the general elections in 1974 and 1978. Then Lee San Choon, the MCA President, in an unprecedented decision, contested in Seremban in the 1982 general elections. Had he not done so, the event might not have received the intense publicity that it did in the press. For the first time in the history of general elections, the MCA President had decided to take on the DAP National Chairman in a Chinese-majority constituency. At stake was whether the electorate would continue to return the incumbent DAP National Chairman to office, fighting for rights via a Malaysian Malaysia, or vote in the challenging MCA President who promised to effect rights within the Barisan Nasional (BN) government through Chinese Unity. Thus, Seremban in 1982 symbolized the political contest between the DAP representing the opposition and the MCA representing the establishment. When the votes were counted on 22 April 1982, the Chinese-majority electorate had chosen the MCA.3 In what many observers would consider an anticlimax to his twenty-three year political career, Lee San Choon then decided to retire from politics, giving up his federal (Transport) ministership (in March), the MCA presidency (in June), and finally his parliamentary seat (in October 1983).4 The last development meant a by-election in Seremban, which was held on 19 November 1983.