News
Oddball council results no bar to extending voting system to provinces
When the Hambantota Municipal Council, won by United National Party (UNP) in the February 10 local government polls, convened to elect its mayor last week, it was a councillor from the rival United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) who won the ballot and formed the council.
The Hambantota Municipal Council is among more than 30 local bodies in the country where a political party won the council election but could not form the council due to opportunistic politics played by various parties, according to election watchdog Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE).
CaFFE Executive Director Keerthi Tennakoon says these issues and the problem of hung councils show how the electoral system is deeply flawed and why the watchdog is sceptical about how the councils will function.
“The failure by parties to take an official position on the alliances being made at grassroots level by the two major parties contributed to this situation,” he said.
Despite criticism of the new mixed voting system in the recently-concluded local polls, the Ministry of Local Government and Provincial Councils claims the process is much more inclusive and representational than the previous system and that it could be improved further by holding provincial council elections under a similar structure.
The ministry has decided to appoint a committee to study the outcome and flaws in the local government electoral process to rectify it for use in the forthcoming provincial council polls.
The ministry’s legal officer Gayani Premathilake, who played a major role in drafting the new electoral legislation, said the ministry was very positive about the outcome of the local polls, particularly over a single member representing each ward and the 25 per cent female member quota.
“You can’t blame the whole electoral system for some of the post-local polls developments as most of those issues are related to the political culture of this country,” Ms Premathilake said. “What we are looking at is how we can improve this, omitting some of the flaws.”
One flaw, resulting in hung seats and councils, was due to the removal of a stipulation that a party gain a minimum 5 per cent of the vote in a ward to be eligible for seat distribution. Ms. Premathilake stressed that this cutoff clause had been in the draft legislation but was removed later at committee stage in parliament due to lobbying by minor political parties.
Research by another election-monitoring watchdog, People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL), shows overall female representation in the new councils is 22 per cent, less than the desired 25 per cent.
The highest female representation was recorded in Colombo district (24.12) while the least is from Mullaitivu (16.16).
A discussion on the electoral process was held last week with election watchdogs, representatives of political parties, experts, civil society and common public participating. The event was supported by Ministry of Provincial Councils and Local government and USAID.
Speaking at the event, Prof. Sudantha Liyanage of University of Sri Jayewardenepura noted that even though the new voting system attracted criticism it had some positive features such as the fact that at least half of the members were elected through wards, which reduced clashes between political parties. He also noted that the number of rejected votes was significantly reduced because the voting process was clear and the ballot paper short.
Prof. Liyanage also observed that though the new system was based on wards, the final calculation was purely based on proportional representation (PR).
“With the intention of maximising fairness to contesting political parties, the existing system lacks cutoff points which caused hung results,” he said. “This scenario resulted in very unstable local bodies; hung results for members exceeded more than 400 in the total 341 local bodies,” he stressed.
Delimitation Commission Chairman Dr. K. Thavalingam said a “Sri Lankan model” had to be developed that suited the country’s social and ethnic distribution.
He found a significant flaw affecting ethnic representation due to wards having differing population densities. In Vavuniya, Venkalachchettikulam ward had 900 voters electing one candidate while Aandiyapuliyankulam, with 10,000 voters, was allocated two seats, which meant a winning candidate had to secure at least 5,000 votes.
Dr. Thavaligam noted this issue would not arise in the provincial council elections as each province was demarcated as a separate electorate but he nevertheless proposed a bonus seats system through PR that would accommodate adequate representation of all ethnic communities living in a province.