Thoughts on Electoral Reform (2)

What are we trying to solve with electoral reform? Mostly two things. One is to get rid of the Best Loser System (BLS) – which was the closest thing to stamping us like cattle that one could come up with – and therefore comply with the UNHRC ruling. The other is to try to reduce the unfairness of the First Past The Post (FPTP) system without compromising its stability. Of course both of these objectives can be achieved without introducing the totally undemocratic devices like proportional representation (PR) and double candidacies as proposed in the white paper -- which is nothing more than the toxic 2012 Sithanen report less 4 MPs. Above all we must not lose track of the most important purpose of our Parliament which is to provide good, long and healthy lives for a maximum of citizens by the design and implementation of thoughtful policies. Right? Let us begin with a little bit of history.

Down with PR

As Yashwant Jeewoolall reminded us recently, Labour was dead against PR when it was proposed some sixty years ago. The progressive individuals of the time fought against PR because they knew that party lists would shift the loyalty of MPs from voters to leaders. Indeed if you read Chit Dhukira's Experiments in Democracy you will find out that Philippe Rozemont -- Guy's brother -- was expelled from the Labour Party because he voted in favour of it and that Renganaden Seeneevassen was one of the fiercest opponents of PR. There was even a bye-election in 1956 which revolved around PR and which the Labour Party won. So suggesting PR would be a betrayal of the DNA of the Labour Party.

Connecting two toxic dots

PR has another serious drawback: it eliminates dissent which is something that’s essential especially when facing tough challenges. Adding PR to our electoral system can also be particularly dangerous for the average citizen when combined with the flat tax: you end up with an almost totally unremovable plutocracy which is a system where government screws up everything for the short-term benefit of the 1% or so wealthiest without voters being able to do much about it. Lutchmeeparsad Ramsahok is spot on when he says that donors and yes men are likely the ones who will appear on the infamous party lists.

Sithanen’s main argument is a joke

The main plank of the white paper is that we need an extra 16 to 28 MPs to achieve our objective of getting rid of the BLS as voters will be able to see that these additional candidates reflect the diversity of our nation. Really? So how do leaders pick the first 60? Using criteria provided by the Ku Klux Klan??? The second objective of more MPs is to reduce the unfairness of the FPTP system.

Increasing the correspondence between votes and seats

We might want that but only up to a limit. We definitely don’t want to end up with an electoral system that’s vote wise and outcome foolish. That is one that would compromise the stability of government.Whilst it’s true that more MPs would correct this disproportionality we seemed to have completely missed that we can also reduce this lopsidedness by making our Parliament smaller. So should we make our Parliament bigger or smaller? That’s a question best answered by data.

Our Parliament is way way too big

According to Wikipedia, Mauritius ranks 149th out of 195 legislatures that are members of the United Nations in terms of population/seat efficiency. That's really lame for an ambitious Tiger don't you think? And we're not even in the Top 30 in Africa. Which means we’re in the bottom half. If we had to climb to a spot on that list that's commensurate with our typical ranking of around 50th in some of the global indices that matter we would need to have a Parliament that has no more than 12 MPs. That is our National Assembly has already about 5 times more members than it ought to. You can also look at this from another interesting angle: between 1977 and now the number of voters in India has increased by 500,000,000 – that’s right, 500 million – but the number of MPs in the Lok Sabha has remained unchanged at five hundred and forty something. And don’t forget that our population is set to start declining in less than two decades.

Quota for Women is not only Unnecessary

See, there are three times more women in our Parliament today than in 2000 with most of the progress happening in the 2005 election. And based on data of the last 3-8 general elections women could already make up between 30% and more than 60% after the next two general elections. So the recommendation of the white paper that there be at least one third of candidates from either gender is not necessary. In other words there is absolutely no need to smash a door that’s wide open. Besides Table 4 of the Sithanen 2012 report informs us that 90% of the Parliaments with the highest percentage of women across the world did it without any legislation.

It is actually detrimental to them

There is no question that we’ll see more women in Parliament and in Cabinet in the years to come. There will also come a point in time when we’ll get our own Indira Gandhi – voted as the greatest woman of the past 1,000 years in a 2001 BBC poll. When that happens she should be totally free to bring in the kind of talent she wants to surround herself with. If that means a Cabinet and a Parliament with 90% or more women so be it. And if voters kept returning teams with a very strong female bias for a few consecutive decades we shouldn’t have any problem with that because you see between 1967 and 2000 more than 90% of our MPs were men. But if we accept the retrograde Sithanen proposal that men and women represent at least 33% of the candidates then our own Indira would not be able to have more than 67% of her MPs as women. We would be in effect tying her hands with a glass ceiling. And given that electoral reforms don’t happen very often the Sithanen electoral galimatia would – as the graphic shows – seriously limit the political emancipation of women for half a century if not more. Besides this quota business has additional problems.

Supreme Court of India says there are 3 Genders

In a landmark judgment delivered on April 15, the Supreme Court of India has recognized hijras (transgenders) as the third gender. India’s apex court has also stated that gender is something that is determined by the individual and not by the state preferring the psychological test over the biological one. What this means is that if an MP who previously presented himself as a male decides overnight to wear skirt, blouse and bra then his gender would have changed to either female or hijra. So any suggestions in 2014 Mauritius that there are only two genders will be on increasingly shaky grounds. We’re also best making our Parliament really gender-neutral so as to avoid the drama of having politicians queuing up for sex reassignment surgery (SRS) to get into Parliament on some quota. And possibly have anatomical arithmetic threaten government stability.

So there are really two problems to solve
One is to get rid of the ethnic BLS and the other is to try to reduce the disproportionality of the FPTP. Here is one relatively easy way of solving our electoral puzzle – based on my January 2012 piece on the topic – so we’re ready for the next general elections. First transform the ethnic Best Loser MPs into non-ethnic Best Loser ones so we satisfy the UNHRC ruling. And then allocate a maximum of 8 of these MPs to opposition parties to make sure we always have an opposition of a reasonable size. As the table shows this will become quite handy when one party/alliance wins all the seats: the famous 60-0s. And will help reduce the unfairness of the FPTP system without jeopardizing its stability. And without raping our democracy.

More on the way. Stay tuned.

Read part 3, part 4, part 5 and part 6 of this series. Go back to part 1.

© Sanjay Jagatsingh, 2014