Proportional Representation System
for
Electing Panchaayat Raj bodies
Prof. (Dr.) Satinath Choudhary
November 30, 2010
Content:
Electing Panchaayat Raj bodies
Introduction
Our current electoral system is undemocratic!
Party-list-PR systems:
Open/free-list-PR and free-list-PR:
Closed-list-PR:
Panchaayat Raj elections using a Proportional Representation (PR) system:
Flat top (rather than pyramidal) structure for the executive committees of equals is being proposed:
Sizes of constituencies for various levels of Panchaayat Raj system:
Voting and counting process:
Allocation of party-quotas:
Election of 10-member executive committees from among the elected bodies:
A few advantages of PR over FPTP:
Quotas and sub-quotas for various segments of the society can be easily introduced in our proposed free-list-PR
Bottom Up Democracy for Development and Education of All (BUDDHA) system
The method of election in each of the groups will be SNTV
Successive formation of groups of 20 and election of a few to higher level:
Election of 10-member executive committees at Zila Oarishad, followed by that of Block Council and then of Panchaayat:
Some of the advantages of the proposed BUDDHA structure of Panchaayat Raj:
Appendix-I
An example of distribution of seats to various parties
Quotas for various segments:
Filling various segmental quotas with party-seats:
Concluding remarks:
1
Electing Panchaayat Raj bodies
Introduction
In a book entitled, “The International IDEA Handbook of Electoral System Design,”[i] published by International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, Stockholm, Sweden, 1997, the authors state:
“It is increasingly being recognized that an electoral system can help to “engineer” co-operation and accommodation in a divided society. Electoral system design is now accepted as being of crucial importance to wider issues of governance, and as probably the most influential of all political institutions.”
It will be difficult to envision a society more divided than ours. In a democracy, which, by entitling each person, rich or poor, with one vote of same value, all are supposed to be equal, each group feels entitled to a share of power in proportion to its population – that is justice under democracy! Number of representatives from various groups or their parties gives them their political power. Since all votes are of equal value, each party should get political power (number of representatives) in proportion to votes they got. Thus, an electoral system,which does not enable election of representatives from various parties in proportion to votes they get, is an unjust system. If winners of 40% vote can capture 80-90% seats, while the rest getting about 60% of votes get only about 10-20% seats the votes for the former end up effectively weighing far more than the votes for the latter group of parties just because they are all divided. Thus even though the votes were supposed to be of equal weight, the method of translation of votes into seats has changed the effective weights of the two groups mentioned above. This happens all the time under the electoral system we use currently. A democracy based on such an unjust method of translating votes into seats (political power) won by political parties cannot be said to be a democratic republic! And no justice portends no peace or progress!
Under our current electoral system one person is elected from each constituency. In other words, our constituencies are single-member constituencies. Therein lies the problem, particularly for divided and layered society like ours. Candidates belonging to which segments of the society have maximum chance of winning a seat (representing the constituency)? Obviously it is candidates belonging to the dominant section of the society, or one nominated by a party led by individuals from dominant sections of the society who have maximum chance of winning each and every seat. There are always some exceptions. But leaving aside these exceptional situations, by hook or crook, winning chance of a candidate from one of the dominant sections of the society, or their party, is disproportionately high. As a result, our current election system essentially works as Robin Hood in reversed gear. It loots little political power that the weaker sections have on account of their number and hands it over to the dominant sections of the society.
The above mentioned malaise cannot be rectified by cosmetic surgeries like restrictions on money spent on election, putting limits on the number of days of election campaign, limits on electoral bill boards and so forth. It requires a major surgery like heart transplant -- change of electoral method itself! What we need to do is make the constituencies bigger so that 50 or 100 or more candidates can be declared elected from the same constituency. In these multi-seat constituencies parties may be allocated numbers of individual seats (party-quotas) in proportion to votes obtained by them (the parties). Parties will fill their party-quotas off the top of their party-lists. As for how and when these parties will prepare their party-lists, there a number of methods that will be discussed later. However, it is clear that in a big multi-seat constituency with say, 100 seats in it, a party that is able to get even one percent of votes will be entitled to a seat in the elected body, ensuring that even the weakest segments have a genuine voice of their own to raise their concerns in the elected bodies. Such systems are called party-list-Proportional Representation (party-list-PR, or briefly list-PR) systems. We will discuss these in greater detail in the following sections.
Our current electoral system is undemocratic!
The election system we have inherited from the British is called first-past-the-post (FPTP), or winner-takes-all, or plurality system. Under this system a country or state is divided into small territorial constituencies, each of which is required to elect one member to represent the (single member) constituency – the leading vote getter (winner of plurality, which is not necessarily majority, of votes) is declared as representative of the constituency in question; votes of the rest is reduced to zero – winner takes all!In each of the single-member-constituencies, with the help of money, muscle and media, and via help from bureaucracy, police and judiciary, and by hook or crook, winning chance of a candidate from one of the dominant sections of the society, or their party, is disproportionately high; as such, a candidate from the dominant sections of the society or their party has greater chance of winning in each of the constituencies. Likewise the winning chance of a candidate from the weakest minorities is nearly zero. This latter problem was recognized by the founding fathers of our country and they tried to ameliorate it by reserving some of the constituencies for the weakest (i.e., SC/ST).
However, even though the elected members from the reserved constituencies belong to the SC/ST communities, most often the winning chance of the SC/ST candidates nominated by the parties of the dominant sections is highest, and after being elected they have to abide by the dictates of the party bosses belonging to the dominant sections. Thus overall, parties of the dominant sections of the society are disproportionately over-represented while the weaker sections are disproportionately under-represented. This disproportional advantage in representation of the dominant sections and disadvantage to the weaker section tends to accentuate disparities of the society. All kinds of power, economic, political, bureaucratic, judicial, police, military power of the dominant sections keeps on increasing while that of the weaker sections goes on declining. The result is an oligarchy of the rich and super-rich cultivating master-slave relationship with the downtrodden rather than a democracy of the people with equality and fraternity among all.
People of all segments should get their due share of representation. But being in advantageous situation in each constituency, candidates from dominant sections tend to sweep practically all of the seats under FPTP system. In fact, generally only two parties, both belonging to the dominant sections of the society tend to remain in contention and other parties gradually wither away. Some parties led by OBC individuals have remained in contention owing to the large size of OBC population. But even these parties need to ally with one of the two main parties of the dominant sections of the society.
Party-list-PR systems:
As mentioned above, the above mentioned unfair situation can be ameliorated with the help of list-PR system of elections, in which each party gets party-quotas in proportion to votes obtained by it. How these seats are distributed within each of the parties is discussed below.
Open/free-list-PR and free-list-PR:
In list-PR each party presents its party-list of candidates to voters. Voters cast their votes for a party either directly (without showing their preference for a candidate on the party-list), or a voter can vote for a candidate on a party-list, whence the candidate gets a vote and at the same time the vote gets added to the party-vote. In the latter system, wherein voters vote for candidates and candidate’s vote gets added to the party of his/her affiliation, the party-lists are re-arranged after voting is finished, placing largest vote getters at the top of the party-list. This system is called open/free-list-PR (ol-PR, in brief) – in the sense that party-list is open/free to voters’ input. If the voters have more than one vote to cast, and they are free to distribute their votes among candidates of more than one party, the system is called free-list-PR (fl-PR). After counting, party-quotas, i.e., number of seats going to each party are computed in proportion to votes obtained by them. Each party fills its party-quota off the top of its party-list serialized according to votes obtained by the candidates – with highest priority accorded to the largest vote getter on the party-list.
Closed-list-PR:
In the older systems parties did not avail the voters a chance to influence priority of candidates on the party-list. Parties used to prepare prioritized party-list, with the person at the top of the list awarded top priority – in case party were to win only one seat, it will go to the person at the top of the list. This system is called closed-list-PR in the sense that the party-list is closed from the point of view of voters’ influence – they cannot influence priority of the candidates in the list. In short this system is often referred to as list-PR. It suffers from the fact that the candidates have to indulge in sycophancy of the party leaders if for their names to be listed reasonably high in the party-list for them to have a realistic chance of getting elected. Necessity of indulgence in sycophancy of party leaders (which is part and parcel of FPTP as well, wherein each party must nominate a single person as its nominee) is anti-democratic and at the root of a lot of corrupt practices including autocratic behavior of party leaders. For these reasons ol-PR or fl-PR is much preferred of the list-PR systems. There are a few more type of list-PR systems, which we are not going to discuss here.
There are other even more unjust systems. In South Africa parties do not announce the names of their party candidates. People vote for parties, and parties are allocated party-quotas in proportion to votes obtained by them. Thereafter party leaders sit and which individuals will fill their party quotas. Obviously, aside from the party leaders, it is generally the sycophants and/or relatives of party leaders who fill the party-quotas. In Nepal’s Constituent Assembly election, each party could nominate as many as the number of seats in the Constituent Assembly without assigning any priority to them. After voting and counting, when party-quotas have been computed, party leaders decide who from within their pre-announced list should be picked to fill their respective party-quotas. Here again, it is generally the sycophants and relatives of party leaders who get chosen to fill the party-quotas. It is not much better than the South African system. Any time a selection process is in the hands of party leaders, sycophancy for the leadership becomes essential part of politics rather than service to the people.
In open/free-list-PR systems it is people who decide the priority of candidates within any of the party-list. People who vote for a party should be regarded as members of the party. Thus their votes for an individual within their party’s list and deciding the priority of candidates is nothing but party democracy. Thus from deciding priority to determining party-quotas, everything is in people’s hands without any strings in the hands of party-leaders. In such a system there is no necessity for sycophancy to party leaders. All that is needed is for aspiring candidates is to of some service to the society. Such a system promotes social service among people as most viable way of entering political arena.
Panchaayat Raj elections using a Proportional Representation (PR) system:
I propose free-list-PR as the method of election for governing bodies of Panchaayat Raj, viz., Zila Parishad (ZP), Block Committee (BC) and Panchaayat Assembly (PA). List-PR system are being used in various countries for more than a hundred years. There is a new system called BUDDHA system, which we will discuss later. We may choose to use the BUDDHA system on experimental basis for a couple of districts.
I am assuming a general body of about 60 members at each of the three said levels, which will go on to elect 10 of its members as members respective executive committees (EC), leaving only about 50 in the general bodies. In an EC each of its members will have equal power vested in them, though for convenience they may distribute different responsibilities to different people. Each of them will discuss important things they are going to do in the whole EC, and only with the consent of EC they will discharge their duties. Only when each important decision is made after discussion, we can say that they are collectively sharing all responsibilities. Collective decisions are most of the time better than individual decisions, as elaborated below.
The numbers mentioned above for the general bodies and their executive committees can be altered, what is important is the process of election. The proposed governing structures as well as the method of electing them are flexible. They can be tweaked without affecting the underlying principles.
Flat top (rather than pyramidal) structure for the executive committees of equals is being proposed:
Each of the three levels of the bodies mentioned above, constituted of around 60 individuals, may then go on to elect their executive committees of around 10 individuals with equal power vested in all of them. It would be better for them to rotate chairmanship of the executive committee from meeting to meeting or at least on monthly basis. Electing a chair or president or secretary general or any kind of head of a group for longer periods tends to be divisive as well as promotes factionalism and autocratic and anti-democratic tendencies. Any time a single person is in the position of power, which s/he can dispense without seeking agreement with colleagues, s/he experiences tremendous amount of pressure to use the power rather arbitrarily and autocratically. If the same person could say that s/he will place the matter in a committee and then it will be up to the committee to take action, s/he is able to deflect the pressure brought on him/her. The necessity (and essentiality) of consultation also prevents temptation to use the power arbitrarily for personal gains. Further, in a group of equals if all matters must be discussed in the group, we can assume that the presence of a single honest individual is likely to make the whole group function honestly and transparently.
It is easy to show that probability for at least one in ten individuals to be honest is much higher than that of a single individual (to be honest). Thus decisions that must be made after discussion within a group has far more transparency than the ones wherein a decision is to be taken without any consultation with equals (consultation with subordinates is equivalent to no consultation at all, as the subordinates are likely to be a yes-men, besides, the subordinates are not likely to insist on all decisions to be taken after discussion with them; and the boss is not likely to discuss improper decisions with anyone under him/her). Thus for something to be a collective decision, it must be a collective of equals, not collective of un-equals. All of these point towards necessity of handling power by small collectives of equals (rather than by a single person or by a pyramidal collective headed by a single person) at critical nodal positions of power, particularly at the top of an organization.
Decisions by multi-member judicial benches (with equal power vested among the members of the bench) are accorded greater respect, validity, acceptability and authority and are supposed to be more transparent than decisions taken by a single-member bench. Likewise we can expect greater transparency, respectability, validity and acceptability from multi-member executive committee with equal power vested in all its members. This kind of flat top governing structure, as opposed to pyramidal one headed by a single individual, has been the hallmark of Swiss government headed by 7-member Federal Executive Council of equals since 1848.