By Dr. Dayan Jayatilleke

[Remarks at the Liberal Party seminar on The Need for Electoral Reform]

I’ll commence by drawing your attention to a startling fact. There has not been a single piece of legislation discriminatory towards the minorities subsequent to, that is, after the introduction of the system of proportional representation. The major pieces of legislation that alienated the Tamil community and gave the State the shape of a majoritarian one were all passed by legislatures constituted according to the first-past-the-post electoral system.

From the point of view of what is now called ethnic reconciliation or what I suggest – the search for a new social contract in the post-conflict period – I remain a strong supporter of the principle of proportional representation.

We know that the first-past-the-post system is also known as the ‘winner takes all’ system. In a society such as Sri Lanka, in any particular area, an electorate which had been – and could always be – carved out in a particular manner, the candidates who won the votes of the majority went to Parliament and those who lost felt themselves to be frozen out.

A system of proportional representation gets us past that problem. From a political scientist’s point of view, I consider proportional representation (PR) as a system to be superior qualitatively to the first-past-the-post system. Therefore I am opposed to any proposal for any system which has first-past-the-post as the main or primary mode and PR as only secondary one.

In a society which is multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multicultural, it is especially important that the electoral system should be as accurate a mirror as possible of the actual composition of a plural society. I wish to emphasize this today because I am very conscious that we meet at a moment where certain forces, within civil society, with or without the tacit complicity of elements from the power structure, are openly questioning the multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multilingual nature of Sri Lankan society. They are openly questioning the definition of Sri Lanka and proposing a narrower, harder, harsher definition of what our country and the State are or should be. I would call this project nothing less than one of ‘cultural cleansing.’ Now, in that fraught situation, I think it is very necessary to retain the system of proportional representation which provides the chance for all ethnic, linguistic and religious communities of Sri Lanka to punch their own weight as it were, in the legislature.

I do think though that the question of the bonus seats can be revisited and I for one am for the abolishment the bonus seats, because it gives a kind of artificial weight to the victor.

The second point is to do with the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and here again I think it is very helpful that we have a system of proportional representation which gives the parties of the youth based Left, especially a formerly insurrectionary movement, the hope that they will be represented in full manner in the political process. I would not like to see that tampered with or jeopardized in any way whatsoever.

Preferential votes

As for the system of the preferential votes, I would much rather the people have the choice as to which ones from the party list should go to Parliament rather than have the party leader taking that decision. So, as a system –and I am not talking about the way it actually operates in Sri Lanka – I think that proportional representation and the preferential vote are infinitely superior to any dilution with, still less subordination to the first-past-the-post system.

Of course there is competition, there is spending of money but you find this in the primaries of the United States as well. The real problem is political violence. Now does the problem of violence come from proportional representation system and/or preferential votes? Or does it come from something else? I am for the retention of proportional representation and preferential votes. I am opposed to any kind of dilution of it and an introduction of the first-past-the-post system. But there is a change I do advocate.

Because of my training, I tend to look at these things from a comparative political perspective. So looking at other governments which do have systems of PR and where politicians, candidates, don’t shoot at each other. Certainly not in Israel, which has the system of PR. Therefore, I conclude that the problem does not reside with the system of proportional representation and the preferential vote. The problem lies elsewhere.

I would ask you to consider what the situation would be if we had the same electoral system as today with PR and preferential votes, but we also had the independent Public Services Commission (PSC) which was abolished by the United Front (UF) Government when it introduced the 1972 Republican Constitution. Let’s call that option, PR plus PSC.

So the violence does not stem from the electoral system, it stems from the fact that the law enforcement authorities feel themselves subordinated to the politicians, especially of the ruling party or coalition. It stems from the fact that the bureaucracy, the officials, can no longer tell the candidates or the politicians where to get off, so to speak, in those areas, as they used to in Sri Lanka until 1972. It is because of the fact that the State system which should be relatively autonomous of the partisan political process has lost that independence or even autonomy. This is because there is no independent Public Services Commission which can guarantee that a policeman in the pursuit of his duty can talk back to a candidate, especially of the ruling party, and not lose his job or that he has some independent body to appeal to in such an eventuality. If we do not understand that, if we shift the discussion to the nature of the electoral system, then we are not doing ourselves or society any service.

Wellsprings of violence

What we need to do is to understand the wellsprings of violence in the political and electoral process. Those wellsprings are the hyper politicization that set in with the abolition in the ’72 Constitution, by Mrs. Bandaranaike’s administration of the independent Public Services Commission. Significantly, this was not reversed by J. R. Jayewardene in the 1978 Constitution. Now I can understand, though I do not agree, why he felt anxiety at reversing the privileged place that the ’72 Constitution gave to the Sinhala language and Buddhism, that is, the privileged place accorded to one religion and one language in a multi-religious and multilingual society – which was not obviously the case in the Soulbury Constitution. I can understand that but the matter is not as excusable when it comes to the question of the PSC because, President Jayewardene could have reinstated the independent PSC with no sociopolitical blow back.

Neville Jayaweera has revealed in one of his many articles some years ago, that President Premadasa inquired from him about the possibility of restoring the old CCS, Ceylon Civil Service. But of course, because of his assassination this was not possible. I think there was some sense in President Premadasa that things had to be better and that things were wrong, which is why there was a reintroduction of competitive examinations and an attempt to depoliticize appointments to the State apparatus.

Thus, I would say in conclusion, let’s keep the system of proportional representation and the system of preferential voting and let us address the real problem of violence by freeing the administration, the State structure and its mechanisms, and the entire process of elections, from the hyper polarization and what I call the surplus partisanship which we have been witnessing for the last several decades.