THIS week, we heard from experts and scholars about the fact that there is no perfect electoral system in the world, just as there is no country with the perfect model of democracy.
This means that despite the fact that Fiji’s electoral system may satisfy the idea of “one man, one vote” or may seem ideal because of its emphasis on proportionality, it still may have drawbacks.
Like any democracy, the electoral system, which is the formula that determines how votes cast in an election get translated into legislative seats, must consider the country’s unique set of characteristics.
In Fiji this means, our population composition, our geography, our political history, our people’s literacy level, and prevailing religious beliefs and cultural sensitivities, among other things.
Failure to consider these factors may make our elections a mere rubber stamp – a democracy ‘bucket list’ exercise that does not really support the fundamental tenets of democracy.
Studies of democracies globally have indicated to us the essential role electoral systems and laws play in influencing the long-term political landscape of the country and in determining whether political stability is attainable.
Fiji’s Open List Proportional Representation system allows us to pick our favourite candidate from a party list while retaining proportionality of the election results. This avoids some of the destabilizing and ‘unfair’ results that can be obtained through plurality-majority electoral systems, ‘seat bonuses’ for the larger parties are reduced, small parties can gain access to parliament without polling huge amounts of votes and single party majority government are unlikely to form.
Also, an OLPR system is designed to promote the advancement of women politicians by enabling spaces and opportunities for voters to elect women candidates (also youths and minority groups)
Election experts agree that when thresholds are low, almost all votes cast within PR elections go towards electing a candidate of choice. This increases the voters’ perception that their vote counts and can make a difference, thus discouraging voter lethargy and the feeling of being disenfranchised.
However, these advantages do not seem to have been readily achieved in the past three elections. There are still a few impediments to ensuring that the OLPR system we have enables “equitable, free and fair” elections.
In the current electoral system, there is one large single multimember district which is different from the previous two systems – the first past the post and alternative voting systems, where there were multiple constituencies.
Concerns over having a single constituency are centered on the fact that it weakens accountability, the system of checks and balances and legislative oversight.
It removes the interactive opportunities that existed before, where a voter was easily able to engage with his or her representative in Parliament because the politician, as member of the community, often lived within the community too.
When seats are allocated in one huge national constituency, which often requires a star leader who enjoys national appeal, the link between voters and their members of parliament is weakened. Voters have no or few means of determining the identity of the person(s) who represents them, and have no identifiable representative for their town, district, or village. Furthermore, they also lack the ability to question and hold accountable an individual if they feel they have been poorly served.
This factor is important to consider in developing countries like ours where many communities are scattered in far-flung islands and isolated highland villages, and voters’ identification with their local districts and provinces is sometimes considerably stronger than their identification with a political party or national leader(s).
In Fiji, a voter from Yasawa or Rotuma may vote for a politician who lives and works on Taveuni or in Nausori.
The geographical divide makes it virtually impossible for a meaningful and direct interaction between the voter and the voted, hence decreasing the ability of members of a community to effectively hold their politicians of choice accountable.
This also means that a politician has no specific boundary or community of people to represent and as a consequence, he or she may end up advocating for issues superficially understood and not carefully grasped.
With small multiple constituencies, the chance of parliamentary representatives and their voters having meaningful engagement is high, the chance of voters seeing their representatives within the community is high and the chance of representatives taking up development issues for debate and discussions to parliament (which he or she fully understands because he or she lives in the community) is also high.
This regular and personal relationship between the voter and his or her politician of choice is needed in small developing maritime countries like ours, where people in rural communities often encounter poor service delivery and lag behind in development.
Also, having one large constituency requires politicians and parties to have large sums of money to reach citizens during election campaigns and post-election constituency visits. Most often, because of costs involved, this works against small parties and political candidates that do not have money but are liked by their constituents; in the end the election becomes ‘unfair’ and discriminates against the poor and working class.
Not every aspiring politician has huge savings. Not every political candidate has paid employment. High and unnecessary election costs can also discourage the effective participation of women in politics.
This is because of the fact that many women leaders and political aspirants, especially those in rural, minority and vulnerable communities are often severely disadvantaged and poor.
In the end, not being able to stand in elections breaches their human rights to have a direct say and participate in the governance of their country
PR systems also have the tendency to give rise to coalition governments and a fragmented party system.
It is largely strong on political pluralism. While it may encourage a few parties to work together, in extreme cases, minority parties may hold larger parties to ransom making coalitions fragile.
The bottom line is – proportional representation has its merits but it also has disadvantages.
The main accepted benefit of the system over first-past-the-post and alternative voting is that it decreases the inconsistency between votes cast and seats actually won.
That means there are less wasted votes or the party’s representative in the legislature reflects or is proportionate to the votes the party received.
But that advantage can be contested, because some MPs while have a few hundred votes may enter Parliament because of their popular party front man (or woman), when others with thousands of votes will not make the cut.
Apart from the electoral system some provisions in our domestic laws related to elections have failed to satisfy the concept of “free and fair elections”.
For example, the requirement of having 5,000 signatures of registered voters per divisions may make registering a party administratively difficult, cumbersome and time-consuming.
Furthermore, it systematically dissuades small parties that form around minority issues and support minority voices from registering as a party. In the end this unnecessarily discourages small communities, with small support bases but have strong political aspirations, from participating in elections.
Maybe this is why we have not seen small issue-based parties representing minority rights and special interest groups in the legislature to work alongside big parties.
If this continues, in the end, marginalised sections of society, which democratic principles dictate we should not “leave behind” in our quest for progress and prosperity, may not receive fair representation.
The concept of free and fair elections may seem far-fetched and unattainable to them.
Until we meet on this same page same time next week, it is my prayer that you stay blessed, stay healthy and stay safe!
