The Carter Center last week issued a 146-page report of its analysis of our 2015 General Elections. As it had done in previous elections, it included several recommendations which, in its estimation, would lead to a more equitable and stable system of governance in our country. The latter condition has, over the past century, proven to be rather elusive, notwithstanding the protestations of first the colonial power, and subsequently, the politicians that succeeded them.
While, at the most general level, the quest was stated as increasing the “democratic credentials” of the Government, the nature of our severely ethnically divided polity has posed challenges in operationalising the meaning of “rule by the people, for the people and of the people.” At our first general elections, held in 1953 under universal adult suffrage following the model in Britain, we utilised a “first past the post” electoral system in an electorate that was divided into geographical “constituencies”. The candidate garnering the most votes within each constituency was “elected” to the legislature, and PPP candidates won 18 out of 24 constituencies.
The same system was used in 1957 and 1961, but by then the PPP had been split, and the faction led by Mr Forbes Burnham pointed out that the number of total votes secured in all of the constituencies did not translate into a proportional number of seats in the legislature.
While, in Britain, the system had not precipitated such objections beyond academic comment, it was retained because the value of having representatives who were clearly identified with geographical constituencies was adjudged to outweigh the lack of equity. In Guyana, however, because of the ethnic cleavages along which the votes were increasingly being distributed, the system led to an objectionable ethnic underrepresentation in the legislature.
Mr Burnham’s faction — the “PNC” by 1958 — called for a system of voting called “Proportional Representation” (PR), which would rectify the anomaly. There were several variants of the latter system, but the one selected by the British made the entire country a single constituency; and after all the votes were counted, the seats to the legislature were apportioned in proportion to the total number of votes won by each competing party.
Ironically, the British claimed they chose PR to reduce the effect of ethnic voting — by encouraging a proliferation of parties that would be encouraged to compete, since there were no minimum required cut-offs, and even 1% of the vote may secure a seat. This, however, had already been shown not to deliver that outcome in Israel, the only country with such a system.
Since the middle of the 19th century, however, other forms of PR have been successfully introduced by the British in countries such as Australia. Those systems would have better served the goal which the British claimed it sought to achieve in this country’s PR election of 1964. The fact that the British actually wanted to find a mechanism to remove the PPP from office is too well known to be rehearsed.
That the PNC rigged elections to remain in office until 1992 also does not bear repetition, but the role of the Carter Center in returning “free and fair” elections in that year does. With the Center as a broker, several rules of engagement were agreed to by the political players, but history has since shown that the electoral system itself needed to be changed to secure governments that would be seen as legitimate by all sections of our still-ethnically-riven polity.
The riots inspired by the PNC following the elections of 1997 did precipitate some changes, especially in returning a number of legislative seats from “constituencies”. In its recent report, the Carter Center suggests that this move should now “ensure geographic seats are more equitably distributed among electors.”
But more interestingly, it suggests the use of a PR method long used in Australia: “a ranked-choice voting system, to give greater incentive for candidates to appeal to more than their base voters.” (To be continued)
