When Sri Lankans go to the polls in three months’ time to elect their political representatives at the local government level they will create history in several ways. The local government elections to be held next January will see the practice of the mixed voting system for the first time in Sri Lanka, ensure a better political representation of women and youth and, enable a more broad-based voting with new electoral wards in place.
While Sri Lanka used the First-Past-the-Post (FPP) voting and counting method during the first few decades as an independent nation, that system was found to be too simple and unable to ensure adequate accommodation of diverse interest groups in society. The government of President J. R. Jayewardene broke new ground in 1978 with the establishment of the proportional representation (PR) system for the whole electoral system from the local government tier to the provincial council and national levels of governance.
The PR system put in place, while ensuring political representation for small interest groups and communities, also had severe flaws that have been shown up in the ensuing decades of governance and representative politics. The district-based, unwieldy, Preferential Vote method rendered individual politics an expensive vocation leaving aspiring politicians vulnerable to pressures and influences of those interest groups who help finance their political candidacy. This dependency of politicians on special interest groups who funded them has been seen as a major facilitator of corruption and inefficiency in governance.
Additionally, the Manaapé chandé system rendered the electoral district literally a bloody battlefield as the frenzy of inter-party rivalry was doubled by the equally bitter rivalry within parties between candidates fighting over the manaapé.
It was bad enough that rival political party activists – egged on by their candidates and party leaders – physically fought with each other, even bombing and assassinating each other and vandalizing party offices and campaign resources. When candidates of the same party began beating up and killing each other, the Sri Lankan citizenry quickly learned to hate the manaapé system and even fear the onset of any election due to the anticipated violence and instability.
The new system that has long been under discussion among national political leaderships and the intelligentsia alike, is one that mixes the PR system with the FPP system. The mixed system of voting, as experienced the world over, is one so complex that these columns are inadequate to describe or explain in any detail.
That complexity of voting mathematics in a mixed PR-FPP system is a possible stumbling block for public acceptance, especially, among a citizenry that is tired of deliberate obfuscation and manipulation of governmental decision-making by politicians and their henchmen bent on fooling the citizen for as long as it takes to rip-off the system. It is to be hoped that both, the Election Commission and the contesting political parties and candidates use every means of public communications to enable the voter understand how the new system works.
But, the validity and credibility of any system can only be proven in practice. Come January 2018, courtesy, the labours and skill of the Election Commission and its cohort of staff, the new mixed voting system will be in play and the citizenry will soon see for itself.
At the same time, next January, the voting will take place in the newly re-demarcated local election wards that have been freshly mapped out to accommodate new administrative and demographic realities. The delimitation bodies have worked tirelessly these past many months to re-map the local government wards to ensure that the system of representation at local government level will properly accommodate all ethnic communities and other social interest groups – be they newly established villages and settlements, residents of new suburbs or recent migrations from one region to another.
As a result of the painstaking electoral re-mapping, citizens will find themselves in smaller, cozier, local political communities and will enjoy a greater number of Council/Sabha seats to which to send their representatives. An improved level political inclusion is ensured with the demarcation of several new wards, and new pradeshiya sabhas have been created to accommodate population changes and new neighbourhoods.
An improved level of political inclusion is also likely to be ensured by the new requirement of contesting political parties to ensure a certain minimum participation of women and youth candidates. This new requirement will only see full fruition in the long term as more women and youth are encouraged to enter politics by the new system.
All these systems innovation and boldly creative electoral mapping is the outcome of diligence and successfully negotiated legislation by our parliamentarians at the national level as well as the provincial political leaderships. Credit must also go to those experts in electoral processes and democratic governance, as well as to supportive civic organizations, who have stepped up to facilitate the entire process of up-grading and fine-tuning our lowest tier of governance.
Encouraged by the commitment to democratic reform of the current National Unity coalition government, numerous experts and civic groups have made their contribution in many ways. Their main support was by researching grassroots political needs and interests, and, providing information on models of election and representation and other country experience in this vital cog in a country’s democratic system. Many supportive personalities and organizations also helped with advocacy for reform and enabling interactions between rival political groups that led to successful legislation.
Another new practice in politics in next January’s LG polls will be the fixing of elections free of the influence of astrology and other superstitions! Such a vital act by the citizenry, of voting in their representatives to government and legislature, will now, reassuringly, be planned and conducted by the appropriate state authorities in accordance with rational assessment of conditions and national needs, rather than the personal astrological fortunes of individual politicians.