The New Elections System. I’m 30% Sure It’s 70% Better.
The Sri Lankan electoral system is confusing. You vote for parties, then who you prefer within that party. It’s just one big list, so you can’t vote for the guy from your neighborhood without having it watered down by everybody else in a bigger area. You also can’t control who’s on the party list in the first place. Hence it’s usually the guy on TV (or the one with drug money) that wins. So now they’re changing it to a ward based system starting at the local level. But only a 70% ward based system, which to me is still 30% confusing.
Sri Lankan electoral rules are subject to much debate, like the Duckworth-Lewis method in cricket. Or the recent Super 8s in T20. In that case it was some combination of run rate and actual wins that got you in. In the same way, our electoral system makes only very complicated sense and is confusing for most voters.
When you go in to vote there’s only symbols and numbers. There are actually no names on the ballot. You’re also not voting for your neighborhood but a bigger area. The result is that guys bombard TV and the streets with their face, symbol and number, and that’s about it. There’s no particular advantage to canvassing the neighborhood you’re from because you’re effectively contesting the whole district/province. There is an advantage to spending on TV, but none of this is conducive to much of a representative democracy. When these people get in, they’re more beholden to the people that gave them money than the people in their hood.
First past the post is, essentially, that you vote for names on a ballot. But ours isn’t quite like that. We still vote for party symbols, but the party will only post one candidate per ward. For my family, the ward would be Kurunduwatte, and there’ll be one person from each party contesting, so you just vote for the party symbol. So let’s say R. Dunhinda Falls is running for the UNP and I vote for the elephant.
Now, the 30%. That’s a completely different set of names. They’re not attached to any ward. Which the party nominates, and which get doled out depending on the parties percentage of votes.
Uh, I still barely understand, and I’m a pretty high information voter. My impression is that this gives the parties too much power, but they always had power. But I think that’s bad. We should be getting closer to representative democracy where you vote for people rather than placeholders with perks. I’m not entirely sure what direction this even moves us in. I think it’s slightly better in that it’s a ward system, but it’s still 30% weird.
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This is a bad idea (for the country, not the Sandanaya) because this’ll weaken the UNP even further and completely demolish all the other small parties.
How is it a bad idea? It’ll reduce the amount of wasteful, dangerous, intra-party rivalry/violence, and the number of campaign posters defacing walls.
I feel the FPTP system may also result in a candidate of higher calibre having a better chance at getting nominated. Party resources wont play much of a role, the individual will count more. Ultimately, whether the country benefits or not will depend on the quality of the candidates fielded.
Shammi,
Sure it’ll reduce intra-party violence. But it’s like cutting your head off to get rid of a headache.
The new system is going to be unfair to the loser. Under the proportional system, if you get 30% of the votes, you get roughly 30% of the seats. Under the new system, if you get 30% of the votes, and lose, you’ll get much less than 30% of the seats. On the other hand, if you get, say, 55% of the votes, you get much more than 55% of the seats. The new system favours the victor. This is a distortion of public opinion.
This means, given the current state of affairs, the UNP is going to get further screwed. This also means that smaller parties are going to get annihilated. Considering the fact that many of the smaller parties represent minority ethnic groups, this could lead to bigger problems.
I feel the FPTP system may also result in a candidate of higher calibre having a better chance at getting nominated. Party resources wont play much of a role, the individual will count more
No. What’ll happen is its exact opposite. What’ll happen is the party will get more power, and voters will have close to no say in who actually get elected. At least with the preferential votes system, no matter how flawed it is, people have a say in who gets elected. Under the new system, party leaders will decide who get elected. At least with the preferential votes system the party leaders have to nominate people who can actually get votes.
Here’s an opportunity for the main opposition and even minority parties to bring in decent candidates who the voter recognises and respects, and concentrate all their efforts and resources on real issues and policy.
If they dont do that, art least we’ll have halved the poster menace which’ll be a great conslation.
Also, post election, people will have one person to take their problems to, and elected reps wont be able to pass the buck along as they do now.
bring in decent candidates who the voter recognises and respects
No. This is what you’d expect a preferential system to do if it works without violence and corruption. Under the new system, the candidates are will be much less visible to the voter.
Sure it may reduce the poster menace. But that’s not a big enough reason to change the election system.
Also, post election, people will have one person to take their problems to, and elected reps wont be able to pass the buck along as they do now.
That’s an unreasonably optimistic view.
A ward based system means that the candidate is from your own area, someone you would be familiar with.
Parties will hesitate to nominate controversial characters as they have everything to lose in an all or nothing race. I
It also wont be easy to shrug off responsibility when there’s only one person representing a given area.
Anyway I dont really know what’s in this bill. Was only trying to be contrary. How come you didn’t mention your favourite ‘m’ word even once? Not worth all my trouble after all.
Weakening and casting aside the UNP is in the interests of Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka had plenty of experience with first-past-the-post and suffered its bad effects. We were on FPTP until 1978. The losing party would get, say, 5% less votes than the winning one, but be left with 8 seats to the 100+ that the winning party got. Minority parties were forever banished to irrelevance. Pure PR is what we had in 1978. You vote for the party. Party decides who is at the head of the list. People at the head of the list go into Parliament. Then they introduced manapa to reduce the power of the parties.
The mixed system they approved y’day seeks to address the two problems with the current PR: you don’t know who your rep is; people qualified to govern rarely make it.
yep. True, I’m not a big fan of FPTP system but don’t think proportional representation is effective. I think a combination of Alternative Voting(AV) with some proportional representation will be a good one.
Party is all mighty according to the new system. Parties are essential for democracy but with no democracy within parties in Sri Lanka the present leaders will have lot more power in their hands. for example,
1. If I want to become the member for the Borella ward, e.g., I have to get the nomination from a political party or pull together 40+ people contest each and every ward and call ourselves an independent group. The deposit is much higher for those contesting as an independent group.
2. Party selects the Chairman or Vice chairman from among those elected if the party gets a clear majority of votes. If there is no clear majority the chair and V chair will be elected from among the councilors.
3. all vacancies are filled by the party.
Earlier system had its good points and helped to bring about strong local leaders (http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2010/10/24/why-parliament-should-not-rush-the-local-government-elections-bill/). The problem was not with the system but the political culture as whole.
Unless community groups at the local level take an interest in politics in their respective wards and change the political culture from bottom up, we’ll see the same old problems manifested in new forms.