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| THE UNINOMINAL VOTE (22.11.2007) |
| (2007-11-22) |
| Last updated: 2007-11-26 15:56 EET |
For years now, the media, civil society and voters themselves have diagnosed a lethal disease affecting the political class and the gulf separating Mps elected on party tickets since 1990 from the very people who chose them as their representatives in Parliament. The level of public confidence in parliament has plummeted to 10 to 12%. This is all the more alarming as Parliament is the basic institution in a democracy.
The frequent competition between the Presidency and the Government has also taken its toll on the debate on the modification of the voting system. The executive has assumed responsibility for a draft inspired by Pro Democratia, one of the most influential Romanian NGOs, focused on the so-called 'joint compensation system'. Under this system, half of Parliamentary mandates go to candidates gaining the largest number of votes in their constituencies, while half are shared among based on proportional representation.
The voter is, in theory, entitled to 2 votes, one going directly to a candidate, and the other to a list. This way, the system avoids the often frustrating “winner-takes-all' outcome and ensures representation to all parties which exceed the 5% threshold at national level. Under the government project, ethnic minorities, irrespective of their number, will continue to be automatically represented in the Chamber of Deputies.
The increasing number of Romanians living abroad will, for the first time, have their own MP. The presidency sees the project as 'only half a step ahead', because it de facto preserves the opportunities of the party's clientele to be elected, by getting in on party lists. That is why the presidency blocked the project at its start, filed complaints against it at the Constitutional Court and promoted another project – the two-round majority system.
Consecrated by the French legislative election, but also known to Romanians who have used it to elect their president and mayors since 1990, the model is much simpler: one constituency, one elected representative. If no candidate reaches the minimum 50%+1 threshold in the first round, the first two candidates both make it through into a second round. The system politically marginalise extremist parties which, irrespective of the number of votes they receive, rarely obtain a majority in one constituency or another and spares the winning party from being blackmailed by tiny minority parties.
All thresholds are discarded, because, in the words of sociologist and presidential advisor Sebastian Lazaroiu, “If a candidate was elected in a constituency, you don’t have the right to send him back home, because his party did not report a certain national score.”
(Bogdan Matei)
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