FORMER Lands Minister Ashneel Sudhakar says the 55-member House of Representatives should be elected by the people.
During submissions on the proposed Constitution Amendment Bill in Ba, Mr Sudhakar questioned whether the proposed method of selecting members of the House of Representatives would undermine voters’ rights to choose their representatives.
“As far as the legislature is concerned, we are at Clause 64 of the draft which state there are 55 seats and I have read it many times and I could not make sense of it,” he said.
“Of the 55 seats, 33 are constituency wise and 32 are from party lists.
“So my understanding is that 33 people will contest the elections, the percentage votes they get and they are reserved people, 22 who are sitting and waiting at home will then be picked.”
He said the proposed process was flawed because voters might not know who would fill the 22 party-list seats.
“Now that actually diminishes a bit of democratic rights of all our people because they do not know whom they are voting for.
“For the constituencies, you can vote for the 33 that you like.
“The 22 who are on the party list sitting at home, we do not know who they are or might not know.
“But they might by default come into parliament and they could be people we do not want.
“So that is something that I could not make sense of.
“So perhaps the committee can explain on that.”
Under Clause 64 of the proposed Constitution Amendment Bill, the House of Representatives would comprise 55 members, including 33 constituency members and 22 party-list members.
The Senate would comprise 23 appointed members: 14 nominated through the Bose Levu Vakaturaga (BLV), six by the Prime Minister, two by the Leader of the Opposition and one by the Rotuma Island Council.
