Minority Representation Through The 20A

By Shermal Kelambi –June 4, 2015

Shermal Kelambi

The 20th amendment to the constitution seem to be hardly moving is at all. A major obstacle in its path is the objections of the minor parties in fear of being marginalized under a future system. The purpose of this article is to see to what extend their fears are true.

The discussion will be held under a few sub topics:

1. Sri Lankan demographics
2. Present parliament composition
3. Past four election results
4. Fixing the minority issues
5. Two ballot system
6. Ideological minority parties

Sri Lankan demographics

Before talking about minority representation, let’s have a look at the Sri Lankan demographics. Sri Lanka has a 75% Sinhalese majority, 15% Tamils and 9% Muslims. Under ideal conditions if these numbers are to reflect in the parliament, there should be 169 Sinhalese MPs, 34 Tamil MPs and 20 Muslim MPs. However the present parliament has only 28 Tamil and 18 Muslim MPs which is roughly 20% of the total representation of the Sri Lankan parliament.

A 20% representation in parliament for a 25% minority (within a system of 22 bonus seats to district winners and in a country with more than half of the minorities are geographically dispersed), it is almost close to perfection. Therefore the desire for the minority parties to hold on to the current system is understandable. Their main fear seems to be concentrated on the FPP part of the proposed 20th amendment (which is a modified MMP system). The FPP will put the geographically dispersed minorities at a disadvantage, that is their main argument. But how fair is this argument when the 165 FPP seats are all incorporated within a 196 PR allocation?                                                            

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