Reform political parties and their leaders, too

Thursday 28th March, 2024

The government is going hell for leather to bring forth electoral reforms as if there were no tomorrow. It would have the public believe that the current electoral systems are full of flaws, which need to be rectified as a national priority if the country is to be put right and progress ushered in.

System bashing, as it were, has become the vogue in this country. Everyone is calling for a system change these days. Even those who have ruined the economy and enriched themselves at the expense of the public are doing so obviously in a bid to deflect criticism directed at them. A country doubtlessly needs robust systems in all sectors, but what Sri Lanka needs more than anything else, at the present juncture, is the restoration of the rule of law.

Former Chairman of the Election Commission, Mahinda Deshapriya, at a discussion on electoral reforms, the other day, rightly pointed out that unsavoury characters must not be nominated to contest elections. Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, PC, was also present at the event. In response to Minister Rajapakshe’s criticism of the current electoral system, Deshapriya said the problem of miscreants being elected to political institutions had to be tackled at source. He argued that the political parties had to refrain from nominating malefactors. One could not agree with him more.

All political parties conduct interviews to select candidates, and, therefore, it is the party leaders who have to take responsibility for nominating political dregs to contest elections. They must sift out miscreants at that point. This will be half the battle in cleansing politics and raising the standards of political institutions, especially Parliament.

Minister Rajapakshe argued that the rogues who were rich enough to throw money around obtained the highest preferential votes at elections. This argument is not without some merit, but there have been numerous instances where moneybags could not overtake other candidates in elections.

In the 2004 parliamentary polls, several members of the JVP, which contested as a constituent of the SLFP-led UPFA, came first in districts such as Colombo, Gampaha and Kurunegala. Obviously, they fared so well in spite of being outspent by many other candidates. Dullas Alahapperuma conducts very clean and inexpensive election campaigns, which are free from polythene, posters, cutouts, etc. He has disproved the argument that the Proportional Representation system has made election campaigns extremely costly. He wins handsomely in the Matara District. Why can’t others emulate him?

There is also a campaign against the preferential vote or manape, which is made out to be a source of evil. If it is scrapped, political party leaders will be able to nominate their favourites to contest elections and enable them to enter Parliament, etc., at the expense of the popular candidates who deliver votes to their parties. It was to prevent the party leaders from resorting to such arbitrary action that the preferential vote system was introduced.

At present, people can decide who should represent them by voting for political parties of their choice first and marking their preferences for candidates. If manape is done away with, the party leaders will have unbridled discretionary power to ensure that only their favourites are returned. Given the sordid manner in which they manipulate the National List by engineering vacancies to smuggle their loyalists into Parliament, how bad the situation will be in the event of the preferential vote being abolished is not difficult to imagine.

That the preferential vote leads to election violence, especially internecine intraparty disputes, is also a big lie propagated by violent characters in the garb of politicians. The JVP has been free from preferential vote battles because its candidates put their party before self. They are worthy of emulation.

The government ought to tread cautiously when introducing electoral reforms. The mixed-member electoral system under which the last local government elections were conducted in 2018 plunged the country into chaos with the number of local councillors doubling to more than 8,000. Now, efforts are being made to change the new system!

The need, in our book, is for the political parties and their leaders to be reformed more than the electoral systems.