REVAMP LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTORAL LAWS
May 22, 2015 | By KNews | Filed Under Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom, Source
For the first time, Guyana’s next parliament will only have two parties represented. The United Force will not be there as it was for so many years prior to 2011.
One of the disappointing but predictable outcomes of the 2015 elections has been the failure of any of the smaller parties to gain seats. The new parliament will therefore have the APNU+AFC on one side and the PPPC on the other.
The 2015 elections marked the demise of the smaller parties. The elections were a major setback for these parties. It is doubtful whether any of them can muster, in such a polarized political environment, the wherewithal to contest any more general and regional elections. Five years from now, there is little hope that anything is going to change.
Local government elections are expected to be held next year. If this is done, the two main political groupings, APNU+AFC will once again dominate the political landscape. There will be no place for the third parties.
Yet, it should be observed that the best nursery for small parties has always been in local government. Many a party in other countries first sought to gain footholds and strongholds by contesting State elections. They have then graduated to power at the national level. The local government system therefore is a good incubator for smaller parties.
But in Guyana’s present polarized political climate, it is doubtful whether the smaller parties have any chance in local government elections should they be held under the present system, and should they be held next year.
The results of the 2015 elections, should by themselves offer some food for further thought as to how best the system can be made more representative. Revamping our local government electoral system to make it more representative, can serve as a useful model as to how to proceed at the national level.
There is much scope for reform of the electoral system for local government elections. The PNCR and the PPPC had parried for years in deciding what sort of split was desirable for the system. Should it be a 40-60 constituency/PR split or should it be 60-40. The time that they took deciding on this would have been better spent preparing the country for a situation where every community would pick its own leaders and have elections to determine who would represent each community, based simply on who gets the most votes. In other words, why not have a first-past-the-post system.
Take Georgetown for example. Georgetown is physically demarcated into wards. But there is no run-off election for each ward. Instead, wards are grouped together.
In some cases the voters from three wards will have to vote for one candidate. A better option would be to have elections for each ward and based on the number of wards agreed upon, then that will be the number of seats in the Council. In other words, what I am proposing is totally doing away with the PR element of the elections.
The downside of this, and of course of the irony, considering my original argument in favour of small parties, is that PR at least offers smaller parties a chance. But does it?
The smaller parties had absolutely no chance in the national and regional elections. They were marginalized under the very system that theoretically was supposed to grant them greater representation. There is therefore no reason to assume that by keeping a PR element in local government elections that smaller parties would do better.
In fact, these smaller parties may do better in very small communities and wards where their leaders may be well-known and popular. They stand a better chance there than under the present system.
The advantage of moving towards a full first-past-the-post system is that it may blood young talent, and this in turn may force the larger political groupings to make more accommodation for emerging leaders. This in turn will encourage the emergence of new blood and could have a positive impact in encouraging independent candidates to try.
If the new government is serious about the things that it preaches, it may want to consider discussing with the opposition, a total revamp of the system of local government electoral laws along the lines outlined above.