*PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION WILL BECOME AN OWN GOAL*
Titus Boye-Thompson, Accra
It is a shame that the All Peoples Congress is embroiled in its own domestic difficulties to otherwise work their way around the proposed proportional representation fiasco. Undeniably, the government’s approach to the proposals are legally flawed and fraught with deliberate disregard for constitutionality. In the event, this government have been largely engaged in misconstruing the precepts of our laws and bent on frustrating the good intents of the framers of our constitution.
To be candid, the context of proportional representation is to broaden the pool of ideologies represented by differing political persuasions in a House of Representatives. In the final analysis, the main advantage of a PR system of representation is the fact that it provides for a wider scope of the different voices of the people to be heard in the legislative environment. PR will yield much more plurality in political participation than we can achieve with the first oast the post, majority system.
In the event, fringe parties like NGC and C4C will have not only firmer representation in the House of Parliament but other groups that are not far represented will be able to reach the threshold to be engaged in the House as Representatives of their own people and their voices.
Proportional representation is therefore a better way of ensuring wider participation in the political process and therefore should be embraced by those who will always be disregarded or discounted within the majority “first past the post” system.
Given its potential benefits for widening particioation, its attention to smaller voices and its appeal to political plurality, the question is often asked about the present discomfort and opposition to its implementation for the 2023 electoral cycle. Should this not have been a welcoming change to produce a more level playing field within the political space?
Notwithstanding its advantages, there is a principle of peripotentiality that is required in such approaches to policy that has been largely neglected in this case. While the Sierra Leone Constitution makes clear the provisions and conditions upon which to predicate the introduction of such a system, the very act of attempting to ramroad the process makes it suspect. Government has pushed its own MPs to gerrymander the introduction of the system by force – the very act of inviting the police into the well of Parliament to cordon off the path through which the document needs to pass to be laid is indicative of a throttling of parliamentary procedures. At no time in the history of Parliamentary democracy has it been proper to ask the security forces to restrain opposition politicians from opposing a proposed bill that was not in fact brought to Parliament in the proper manner.
This government has done a lot of things that by their handling have eroded the confidence that the people should have on those elected by them to high office. If armed Police are required for the legislature to sit then we have become a Police State, a captured democracy and a nation under siege.
The proper functioning is not to embellish strongholds but to secure representation from others without the usual numbers to succeed on a first past the post system. This means that the APC will now stand a chance to nurture and grow Southern politicians who will adopt the APC ideology instead of the tribal card. At the same time, the Susu domination of Kambia and the Kono stranglehold would yield to APC power sharing as the APC is the Party polling second best in those places. Ostensibly, if we have to go by the last elections, the APC would have secured at least two seats in Kambia and thrwe in Kono. Unknowing to them, the proportional representation system would benefit the APC more than the SLPP. Yes, the SLPP will have some seats in the North but we have always been accepted of the fact that Northerners are free to adopt a political ideology that is not necessarily tied to their tribes. This is not so in the South where the political groundswell is unitarily tribal and Mende conscious.
So the introduction of a PR system would not necessarily be a bad thing for the country but by jove, the government should do things right!
