2012 LG electoral system will have to be restored - Prof. Liyanage
April 2, 2018, 9:28 pm
The present local government elections system has resulted in complete chaos with unstable administrations formed in the majority of LG institutions. No political party has emerged unscathed. The two main political parties in the country the SLPP and the UNP, the biggest regional party the TNA and other minority parties like the SLMC have all been affected to a greater or lesser degree. The TNA which not so long ago was the preeminent political force in the north, managed to get a TNA Mayor elected in the crucially important Jaffna Municipality only by forming an alliance with long term rivals. ‘
In the middle of this unfolding fiasco, The Island staffer C. A. Chandraprema spoke to Sudantha Liyanage Professor of Chemistry and the Dean of the Faculty of Applied Sciences of the University of Sri Jayawardenepura, who is credited with having designed the hybrid first-past-the-post and proportional representation system which was proposed by the Parliamentary Select Committee on electoral reform headed by Dinesh Gunawardene as the most suitable system to replace J. R. Jayewardene’s proportional representation and preference vote based elections system.
The new system of elections designed by Prof. Liyanage and proposed by the PSC headed by Dinesh Gunawardene was further developed by the then Minister Basil Rajapaksa and passed into law as amendments to the Local Government Elections Act in 2012. However on 25 August 2017, the present government rammed through Parliament sweeping changes to this system of elections and the present confusion stems from these ad hoc changes, as Prof. Liyanage explains.
Q. How did you get involved in the electoral reform process?
A. Around 2003, a Parliamentary Select Committee under the chairmanship of Mr. Dinesh Gunawardene was appointed to look into electoral reform. The PSC through public advertisements called for proposals and I was among the sixty individuals who submitted proposals for electoral reform. All those who submitted proposals were given an opportunity to make presentations to the PSC. The then Elections Commissioner Dayananada Dissananayke was also involved in the process. By 2004, about three of these proposals had been short listed and taken up for further discussion. Thereafter the PSC decided that my proposal was the most suitable and it was selected to be further developed and implemented. We analysed election results from the 1970s onwards in designing the new system. It was on this basis that the Parliamentary Select Committee on electoral Reform headed by Dinesh Gunawardene published its interim report in 2008 which stated among other things that the system of elections should be changed at the local government level first and based on the result, to decide whether it was going to be extended to the other levels as well with any changes that may be necessary. In 2012, Mr. Basil Rajapaksa introduced electoral reform at the local government level through amendments to the Local Authorities Elections Act basing himself on the 2008 interim report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Electoral Reform. Under this system, 70% of the representatives of a local government institution would be elected on the first past the post basis and 30% on the proportional representation quota. A delimitation committee was also appointed to demarcate the wards in each local government area. The first local government election under this system was to be held in 2015 but the government changed before that. After the government changed, Messrs. Mano Ganesan, Rauff Hakeem and the JVP began saying that the 70-30 ratio was wrong. In the system put in place by the 2012 amendments to the local government elections law, only the votes of the losers would be counted in selecting the proportional representation candidates. The political parties in the present government got together and held discussions among themselves and it was on the basis of these discussions that changes were made to the local government elections law. It was then decided that the 30% PR quota was not sufficient and that it should be increased and further that the seats should be apportioned to each political party on the basis of the total number of votes received. It was Mr Ranil Wickremasinghe who brought the suggestion that 25% women’s representation should be made compulsory.
Q. In the system that was originally introduced in 2012, the number of representatives each party is entitled to on the proportional representation quota was to be decided only after the votes of all those who had either got less than 5% of the vote and or had won in the wards on a first past the post basis were eliminated from the race.
A. Yes, this government eliminated the 5% cut off point as well as the bonus seats that were given to strengthen the winning party under the old proportional representation system. Since this is now a pure proportional representation system, only weak administrations can be formed. When we designed the original 2012 system of elections, we made it a specific point to look at the 1977 election result where the TULF got a small percentage of the vote and became the main party in the opposition with its leader holding the office of opposition leader while the SLFP which got a much larger proportion of votes at that election obtained only eight seats. We made sure that such a thing would not take place under the system that we proposed. Under the old first-past-the-post system, the votes of the loser were not given any value.
Q. There was a great deal of instability and factionalism at the local government level even in the best of times. The 1987 Pradesheeya Sabha Act had a special provision where in the event a budget is defeated in a pradesheeya sabha, the Chairman will present it again and even if it is not passed the second time, it will be deemed to have been passed.
A. When the 2012 local government elections system was put in place, we worked on the assumption that with 70% of the representatives being elected from wards on the first past the post basis, stable administrations would come about automatically.
Q. Based on the history of this special provision, and the spate of budget defeats and revolts against Chairmen when it was relaxed, we can predict that the presently constituted local government bodies are not going to be stable.
A. Yes. If the 70%-30% proportion of the representatives to be elected on the first past the post basis from the wards and on the PR quota had been retained, that could have been avoided for the most part because the number elected on the PR basis would have been less than one third of the number of representatives in the institution.
Q. Under the present law, once a Chairman is elected, stability can be guaranteed only in the first two years. If infighting breaks out within the institution after that, control over the local government institutions will pass on to special commissioners.
A. Yes. The cost of conducting the local government election is Rs. four billion. After spending all that money, what we have got are very unstable local authorities which will not be able to serve the people properly. We will have to restore the 2012 system if the local government institutions are to be made to work. Under the present system we may end up seeing about two thirds of the local government institutions being controlled by commissioners in a couple of years’ time. The number of representatives has doubled and they will all have to be paid and given allocations. I heard President Sirisena saying that each local government member in the Polonnaruwa district will be given an allocation of Rs. five million annually. If the thousands of local government representatives in the country are to be given Rs. five million each annually, that itself will be an enormous burden which will destroy the country. I think even parties like the SLMC are now be open to the idea of having a system which ensures strong local government institutions. I met Mr. Hakeem after the recent elections and he admitted that they had made a big mistake. Mr. Nizam Kariapper was also dissatisfied with the way things have turned out. All these problems arose because some people shortsightedly looked only at the advantage that they expected to gain by instituting a pure proportional representation system.