Why our Parliament is not Democratic
On Sri Lankan Parliamentary Elections
Who represents us?
I live and vote in the Borella Polling Division of the Colombo Electoral District. Who represents me in Parliament? Short answer: I have no clue.
Longer answer: The problem is not that I don’t have a representative. The problem is that I have too many representatives.
48 to be exact.
What? 48? Seriously?
In the last Parliamentary Election (2020), the Colombo Electoral District had 19 seats. Every vote in Colombo (including mine) influenced who got elected to those seats. Hence, I have 19 representatives from Colombo.
In parallel, every vote Nationwide (including votes from Borella) influenced how the 29 National List seats allocate across parties. Hence, I have another 29 representatives on the National List.
19 + 29 = 48Just as “A Friend to all is a friend to none”, having 48 representatives is good as having zero.
Why? I don’t know who to talk to if I need an MP to represent some need or cause or fix some problem. If I talk to Hon. Kaputudasa, she will tell me that I should be talking to the Hon. Gonsinghe. In turn, the Hon. Gonsinghe will pass the buck to the Hon. Mainananda. And so on.
Nor can I sack anyone; because it is always someone else’s fault. Power without accountability.
Either they win, or we lose.
Hence, while our elections create an appearance of democracy, the reality is that Large Political Parties and their cronies control who gets into Parliament.
Our Parliament is not Democratic.
So, what is the alternative?
Roughly 16M Sri Lankan citizens are eligible to vote. At each Parliamentary Election, these voters elect 225 Members to represent them in Parliament. Or roughly 70K voters per representative.
Hence, ideally, each of us should get together with roughly another70K eligible voters and elect one representative to Parliament.
Not participate in a charade that elects 48.
How do we do this? There are several alternatives we could consider. Let’s consider a few.
FPTP (First Past the Post)
Many have proposed returning to FPTP, the “old system” we had until 1977.
In addition to being simple, the connection between voter and representative is very clear. Also, it is relatively easy for smaller parties or independents to contest elections that run at a single “seat” level. Hence, large political parties (and their cronies) have less control.
However, detractors claim that FPTP can be undemocratic because “not all votes count”. For example, if candidates A, B and C get 35%, 34% and 31% of the vote, A gets elected despite B and C getting almost as many votes.
Mixed Member Proportional Representation (MMPR)
Many in Sri Lanka (including several Think Tanks and State Committees) have proposed MMPR, a sort of FPTP and PR (Proportional Representation) Hybrid. See Wikipedia for details.
I am sceptical of MMPR because it is very similar to our current PR system and suffers from most of its maladies. Each voter effectively ends up having multiple representatives, negating transparency and accountability.
Ranked Voting (RV)
In Ranked voting, voters assign preferences (or ranks) to candidates. If a single candidate has a majority of first preferences, that candidate is declared the winner. If not, the candidate with the lowest number of first preferences is eliminated, and the second preference of this candidate is added to the other candidates. The process continues until a winner is found.
RV might be more democratic than FPTP because more votes “count more”. The winning candidate must get a majority of some preferences to win.
[Related, Sri Lankan Presidential Elections use a variant of RV, though second preferences have never played a part in the final result.]
Approval Voting (AV)
Approval Voting is similar to RV voting in that voters can vote for multiple candidates.
It is dissimilar in that voters don’t state a ranked preference. Instead, voting for a candidate means that they “Approve” of that candidate. Hence, a voter can approve of all the candidates or none. The winner is the candidate with the highest number of approvals.
AV is perhaps my favourite system because it is simple and democratic. Every vote counts.
Abolishing the dictatorial executive presidency is priority number one on my constitutional “wishlist”. Number two is making our Parliament democratic; by reforming how we elect MPs.
While I prefer some of the above alternatives to others, they are all better than what we have now, which is a joke disguised as a farce. The important thing is that we know who represents us. We can elect them; and we can unelect them; according to our democratic will.
All Sri Lankans should work for this. Unless, of course, you’d rather have us live in a dictatorial autocracy.
