I share the concern of many that the “first past the
post” electoral system fails to represent the diversity
and interests of our fellow citizens. It is something
we have brought on ourselves by the intense partisan politics that
has developed in BC. Since we now select our government
in a partisan context, we need to amend our electoral system so
that different interests could be more fairly represented in our
legislature.
I have been observing the functioning of a modified proportional
representation system in Sri Lanka—belatedly introduced
to head off the exclusion of cultural minorities. The
majority of the legislature is selected by winning a plurality of
the votes in a territorial constituency. The balance is
chosen by all electors indicating a preference for a specific
party’s “national
list”. All the party national list votes
within the country are tallied and the remaining seats are
distributed according to the proportion of votes received.
This system provides opportunities for a range of interests to
be represented in the legislature—such as the Muslims,
the Tamil-speaking plantation workers and the residents of
neglected regions. Since being put into practice in the
1989 general election, the party with the largest number of seats
has had to build a coalition with the minor parties to secure
sufficient support to form a majority. The three governments that
have been elected since 1989 have certainly paid much greater
attention to the interests of cultural minorities and regional
concerns than earlier governments.
However, two constitutional provisions that were introduced in
1978 have greatly complicated the functioning of governments,
independently of the modified proportional representation
system. These are: the independently elected executive
presidency; and the constitution amending process which requires a
two-thirds majority and a referendum to be called at the discretion
of the executive president. Power sharing between the
President and the Prime Minister is a source of constant conflict
while the extremely onerous amending requirement makes it virtually
impossible to simplify the structure of government. In
short, I would judge the political problems that Sri Lanka is
currently facing come from these constitutional burdens rather than
from the mixed proportional representation electoral system.
May your deliberations be fruitful for the citizens of BC.
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