Electoral Reforms: some critical

reflections

Professor Jayadeva Uyangoda-Monday, April 6, 2015

Sri Lankas current debate on electoral reforms

seems to be heading towards a politically inspired deadlock. Some powerful
sections of the SLFP seems to be using the idea of electoral reforms either
as a bargaining tool for some short-term political gains, or to checkmate the
constitutional reform initiative aimed at changing the executive presidential
system.
Besides the politics and politicking unfolding in relation to the theme of
electoral reforms, there are some major shortcoming in the way in which
the issue is approached by the political parties, the election commissioner,
and civil society groups. This article aims at a critique of this dominant
approach to electoral reforms and then to suggest some alternatives.
Normative Goals
First of all, it needs to be noted that the dominant approach to electoral
reforms lacks a normative perspective. Normative goals of reform are
necessary to foreground, because without them the entire exercise of
electoral reforms can degenerate into a technical exercise, towards which it
already appears to be heading at present.
In any democratic society, the primary normative objective of electoral
reform should be to broaden democracy. That entails a framework of other
values and goals that should include making representation more inclusive
and more reflective of the diversity of society. In other words, electoral

reforms should aim at further democratizing democratic representation at

all levels national, regional and local.
Sri Lankas debate on electoral reform has often highlighted the need to
further democratize the existing structures and processes of electoral
representation. The demand by women for some measure of equality in
representation by providing a quota for women is an example. Another
example is the argument advanced on behalf of small minorities for
increased representation while recognizing their territorial dispersion. The
concern among several non-dominant and subordinate caste communities
in Sinhalese as well as Tamil societies for the accommodation of their group
specific interests in the electoral process is no less democratic in relation to
representation. This demand originated in the early 1930s and continues
until now in a variety of forms.
Crisis of Representation
Meanwhile, the public debate on electoral reforms began in the 1990s and
later gathered momentum in a context which can be described as the crisis
of Sri Lankas representative democracy. It is a crisis evolved as specific to
Sri Lanka, and is independent of what political theory describes as crisis of
representative democracy. The latter refers to the negative consequences
for democracy arising out of the separation of the elected from the electors,
once an election is over.
Sri Lankas crisis of representative democracy evolved out of two sources,
the executive presidential system and the system of proportional
representation, established with the 1978 constitutional change. The
executive presidential system created a powerful office of the president as
the head of the executive as well as the legislative branches of the state,
and the president was to be directly elected by the people. This totally
undermined the powers, position and authority of the legislature, the core
institution of representative government, whose members were also
directly elected by the people.
Thus, the popular will came to be represented and expressed at two parallel
branches of the state, thereby introducing a great deal of confusion to both
the theory and practice of representative democracy in Sri Lanka. This
conflict is observable in other political systems too where the President as
the head of the executive and then a legislature are elected directly by the
people and are deemed to represent popular sovereignty.
PR System
The PR system, the second source of the current crisis of Sri Lankas

representative democracy, has had a mixed political record. When the

system was conceived in the minds of J. R. Jayewardene and his junior
colleagues in the late 1970s, they linked it to their larger project with two
essential components, namely, to accomplish political stability for a strong
state by altering the composition as well as powers of parliament, and to
secure the dominance of big political parties in parliament by eliminating
smaller parties. Actually, the initial cut off point of 12.5% for any party to
even qualify for parliamentary representation was meant to perpetuate the
hegemony of the dominant two-party system in Sri Lanka.
In both these aspects, the crisis of representative democracy that has been
rooted in the 1978 constitution was a product of the authoritarian intent of
the executive presidential system as well as the PR system.
Meanwhile, the PR system went through a radically important shift in the
latter part of the year 1988 when the cut-off point to qualify for
representation was reduced to 5%. Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa,
seeking a broad coalition to garner support for his presidential bid in
December 1988, was instrumental in this change. He actually responded to
a request made by Mr. M. H. M. Ashraff of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress.
That change, as demonstrated in subsequent parliamentary and other
elections, took the intent of the PR system radically away from what JRJ and
his cohorts had earlier conceived. It enabled the smaller and ethnic
minority parties to secure representation in parliament and other elected
assemblies at provincial and local levels in a manner akin to, or even better
than, the previous first-past-the-post system.
Without the PR system with 5% cut off point, parties such as the JVP, JHU,
SLMC, Upcountry Peoples Front, PLOTE, and Democratic Peoples Front
would not have obtained on their own the numbers of legislative seats
even one or two at times -- they did in the elections held in and after 1989.
Its benefits went to new political entities that emerged from Sinhalese,
Tamil, Muslim and Plantation ethnic communities.
The only option they would have had under the previous system was to
enter into coalition mergers with the UNP, SLFP or Federal Party, the three
big players in the electoral party politics.
Thus, the opening up of greater space for several smaller and ethnic
minority parties for representation is one of the unintended consequences
of the PR system with a low cut-off point. It actually took away the most
undemocratic feature of the original PR system, introduced in 1978. More

importantly, it enabled ethnic, social, political and ideological diversities of

our society to find representation in all legislative assemblies.
Two Sides of PR
The method of preferential voting built into Sri Lankas PR system is the
other feature of the electoral system that has received a great deal of flack
for justifiable reasons. Experience shows that it spawns corruption, broods
violence, and leads to severe infighting even among candidates of the
same party list.
As critics correctly point out, the system of preferential voting has
negatively personalized the electoral process, even undermining the role of
political parties as the primary vehicle for democratic will formation among
citizens.
However, there is another side -- a positive one -- to the preferential voting,
combined with the PR system, which has led to further democratization of
representative democracy in Sri Lanka. It refers to the opportunity it has
successfully offered to ethnic and social minorities the latter are caste
groups -- to elect representatives from their own identity communities,
within the framework of existing political parties, to parliament, provincial
councils as well as local government bodies.
In this too, the PR system with preferential voting, has contributed to
democratization of representation, beyond the capacity of the first-past-the
post (FPTP) system.
How did it work? It worked in the combination of three factors specific to Sri
Lankas PR system proportionality, preferential voting and the district as
the unit of representation rather than an electorate of relatively small size
with small populations. There is an interesting dimension of political
geography also working here. Most of the small ethnic minorities -particularly Muslims, Up-Country Tamils and the Tamils in the Western
Province are territorially dispersed. In political theory, they are called
dispersed, or non-territorial, minorities.
To reap benefits of the FPTP system of representation, minorities had to be
territorially concentrated so that their candidates could poll majorities in
conventional electorates.
Thus, the FPTP system with representation confined to relatively small
electorates, did not favour non-territorial minorities.

In contrast, the PR system with preferential voting enabled voters of

dispersed ethnic minorities within districts to focus on a few candidates and
maximize their chances of winning. Districts are not only much bigger than
conventional electorates in geographical terms; they often have small
minority and caste communities dispersed throughout, across many
electorates.
That is how several social minorities -- particularly karawa, durawa,
slagama, bathgama and wahumpura communities in Sinhalese society too
benefitted from the PR system with preferential voting in parliamentary,
provincial council and local government elections. This was reflected in
electoral outcomes in Kegalle, Kurunegala, Matara, Galle, Ratnapura and
Kalutara distrcits, and even in such an urban, relatively industrialized
electoral division as the Gampaha district.
I assume that this has been the case in the Tamil society too.
Not just Things of the Past
Some who are engaged in electoral reform discussions appear to believe
that caste and ethnic identity are basically anti-democratic legacies of the
past and therefore, any scheme of representation need not accommodate
these two identities as foundations of representation. This does not reflect a
correct understanding of the sociology of democratic and electoral politics
in Sri Lanka.
Any report of past delimitation commissions will show us how much
significance these two minority identities have received in the commission
deliberations. Similarly, it is an open secret how presidents and prime
ministers have always accommodated ethnic and caste-specific demands
for cabinet representation during the difficult task of distributing spoils in
the form of ministerial positions. In preparing electoral lists, party
secretaries are always overwhelmed by caste and ethnicity-specific
pressures for inclusion of what has been conceptualized in administrative
discourses as special interest groups. Rather than disappearing, ethnic
and caste identities as domains of immensely valuable political capital have
thrived under electoral democracy, particularly under the PR system. This is
not a bad thing. On the contrary, it is an eminently democratic way of how
representation should work. Since electoral democracy arouses aspirations
for emancipation as well as power among all communities, representation
to be democratic should include the excluded, bring the marginalized to the
centre, and open up new space for representation so that the social, ethnic
and cultural diversities, with their renewable energies, find their concrete
expression in the electoral and legislative arenas.

Thus, any move towards demarcating electoral districts and divisions anew
entails, and demands, sensitivity to social and political geography of
representation. That is why the best approach to electoral reforms should
not only be a technical exercise. The technical aspect of it should be
informed by social and political sensitivity to new representational needs.
Inclusion and Diversity
It is exactly this normative element of inclusion and expressing diversity
that is ignored in the current debate on electoral reforms. To give an
extreme example, the proposal for the mixed system of elections calls for
the re-demarcation of electoral districts/constituencies. Some have argued
that this re-demarcation can be done quickly, within just a few weeks, since
the google maps and the GPS technology are easily available. This is a
technical approach to electoral reforms, which ignores political, ethnic and
social geography of voter concentration as well as dispersal, and also the
current needs for continuing inclusion and representation of diversity.
The debate has also effectively ignored the demand for a 1/3 quota for
women in parliament as well as other assemblies of representation.
Recognition of diversity and facilitating pluralism and inclusion in
representation is important to deepen democracy. What we need is an
inclusivist, not exclusionary, system of representation. The point then is
that if the current proposals are accepted to reform Sri Lankas electoral
system, it would certainly be a reform in the politically wrong direction. It
will not either deepen or broaden Sri Lankas electoral democracy.
It is most likely to perpetuate the politics of exclusion, promote discontent
among ethnic and social minorities, and enhance the ethnic and social
majoritarian politics as well as the dominance of major parties in
democratic politics.
Posted by Thavam