Electoral Reforms & Political Minorities

By S. Sivasegaram –May 5, 2016

Dr S Sivasegaram

Electoral reforms will be a bigger bone of contention in the drafting of the constitution than key issues facing the country. Each political party will be interested in securing its strength in future parliaments. Equally there will be personal ambitions at play. What is unfortunate about electoral reforms proposals thus far is that it they merely concern implications for the parliamentary strength of certain political parties and not democratic representation.

First Past the Post Scheme (1947-1977)

Until the passage of the constitution of 1978, the electoral scheme of the country was based on the “first past the post” (FPP) scheme for all elected bodies. It offers the benefit of stable parliamentary government in the context of a few serious rivals for power, but at the price of representation not being in fair proportion to the votes received by the parties and a severe bias against representation of all small political parties except those with regional power bases. The data below illustrates some of the worst disparities between the votes and seats secured by parties. For simplicity I have combined the data for the left parties contesting in their party names and that for the two main Tamil political parties of the time. The percentage of votes is shown after the party name and percentage of seats in parentheses.

(Note: SLFP refers to the MEP alliance in 1956; Left refers to all left parties contesting in their names; Tamil refers to combined TC & FP from 1947 to 1970 and the TNA in 1970. In 1947, independent candidates polled 29.2% of the vote and won 22.1% of the seats.)

Disparity existed all along between votes received and seats secured. The UNP suffered injustice in 1956 and 1970 and the SLFP even worse in 1977. This disparity is also distorted by strategic contests, electoral pacts and regional patterns of voting, mostly based on ethnicity. Since 1952 (results not shown), the FPP scheme has been disadvantageous to the loser among the main parties (and alliances). All small parties except Tamil nationalist parties— with a strong regional base in the North and East —suffered.

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