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| Sunday, 21 September 2003 |
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Vote one Party, elect members from another by SUGEESWARA P. SENADEERA Norwegian Municipal Elections were held on September 15.There was no major election campaign by any of the political parties or candidates apart from occasional door-to-door canvassing and pamphlets in one's mail box. I have taken a personal interest to study the electoral system for two reasons. Firstly as an officer representing Sri Lanka Government I took an interest in the municipal election to study the pattern of political developments in the host country, because of the current debate in Sri Lanka on the need for revision of electoral system in the country. Recently appointed Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) on the Amendment of the Electoral System PA, MP Dinesh Gunawardene pointed out the need to change the present system and to establish a system based upon electorate and national representation. He added that none of the countries which implemented the proportional representation system has achieved the desired results. Secondly there were three candidates of Sri Lankan origin viz Dr. Amara Ranaweera and Mr. Mubarak Ali (both sitting members of Stavangar Municipal) and Mr. Yogariah Balasingham, contesting for the first time for Oslo Municipality. At the time of writing the outcome of the election is not known. In Sri Lanka there is a consensus among the opinion makers on the need to change the present electoral system. The PSC on the Amendments of the Electoral System was set up because of the demand from the people. As Chairman Gunawardene pointed out it is essential for the Government as well as the Opposition to unite in this endeavour. The PSC is also expected to call for assistance from several foreign countries in this regard. Mr. Gunawardene addressing the initial meeting of the special committee said it hopes to obtain statements from the public organisations,political parties, intellectuals and professional as well as from the Departments of Elections and Census and Statistics. As Mr. Gunawardene urged the public to present proposals and opinions, I would like to present some salient features of the Norwegian system, some of which could be incorporated into Sri Lanka electoral laws in order to make it more representative. It is essential to adopt a system after studying all aspects as the proposed system would encompass not only the parliamentary elections but also the provincial councils and the local government elections as well. In Norway the voter is entitled to vote for any political party or independent group and at the same time vote for the candidates of his choice from any party or group or even outsiders who are not in the election fray but from the voter's opinion he or she should be a member of the council/parliament. Although the system sounds very complicated when stated as above, once it is explained it is not at all a difficult system for an average voter of a country with a fairly high literacy rate, to comprehend. One may question as to how a single ballot paper could allow such a diverse choice for the voter. The Norwegian ballot papers are placed inside the voting cubicle of the booth or polling station where nobody could see the ballot paper selected by the voter. Inside the cubicle several ballot papers are placed. Each party has a separate ballot paper. The voter can select the ballot paper of the political party to which he intends to cast his franchise. The ballot paper has the name of the party and names of all its candidates in the upper part. He can select the candidates of his choice from the party. In addition to that the ballot paper also contains blank cages on the lower part of the ballot paper. There is space for 14 names in the blank section. The voter can write the names of the candidates from any party in those blank boxes. The voter can get the names of those candidates from the ballot papers of different parties placed in the cubicle. In addition to that the voter also has the right to reject all the candidates and write names of complete outsiders (Name of any Norwegian citizen) in the blank boxes. In other words the voter can first vote for the party and then vote for either candidates from the party or/and candidates from other parties or/and any other person who in the opinion of the voter is capable of representing the community. Once the marking is completed the voter can fold the ballot paper, come out of the cubicle and insert it into the ballot box. The polling officer who is at the ballot box ensures that the voter inserts only a single ballot paper. The counting and the allocation system is somewhat similar to the practice in Sri Lanka. First the party/group votes are counted and then the individual preferential votes are counted. In the event an outsider who is not amongst the candidates listed has received more than two per cent of votes, he/she will receive the information immediately from the counting agent even if he/she is not elected. Once the seats are distributed in accordance with the vote ratio, a Municipal Committee comprising four or five members will be selected to govern. The Committee is considered as an independent governing body and the party affiliation of Committee members will not be considered after they are selected to the Committee. Hence the political parties will get the four or five members elected to the Municipality to fill the vacancies of those who were selected to the Committee. These replacements are taken in accordance with the preferential votes received by candidates who were unsuccessful in the first round. Although the voting for non-candidates would not be an ideal system for a country like Sri Lanka, voting for any candidate from any party is an extremely good system as it will allow the voters to elect the most suitable persons to represent them irrespective of party lines. To give an example from the past I am sure voters of 1960s and 1970s would have ensured people of the calibre of Phillip Gunawardene, N.M. Perera, Vincent Subasinghe, Gamani Jayasuriya, W. Dahanayake (perhaps with exception of 1960 March election) M.D. Banda, Wilmot A Perera and many other stalwarts who were defeated at election due to rejection of their political parties continued to be members of every parliament. Postscript: Yogaraja Balasingham (Bhaskaran) - who contested on the Labour Party ticket has won the election in the Municipal Council Election for OSLO. He came eleventh where 15 members were elected. (Writer Sugeeswara P. Senadeera is Sri Lanka's first Consul in Oslo and a former Sunday Observer journalist.) |
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