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Horse Trading

One of South Asia’s problems is the ridiculous claim that our democracy is moulded according to the “genius of the people” while in actual fact it is an imperfect electoral exercise that is copied from western models with very little relevance to the local environment. This type of democracy bedevils good governance, particularly because the low rate of literacy provides opportunity for a high rate of malfeasance. The voters in India having given a mixed verdict, parties and individuals in a “hung Parliament” have been engaged in compromising ethical principles in the scramble to acquire the seat of power. The commonly used term for this ambiguous post-electoral exercise is “horse-trading” and except in Sri Lanka, which delivered a complete mandate for change, things are the same in Pakistan, Nepal, India and in the near future will most probably be the same in Bangladesh. With every passing election, the verdict of the electorate is increasingly being blatantly corrupted, with a commensurate loss of public confidence in the electoral process. The crossing of the ideological floor is not confined to post-election power plays only, candidates and parties now search for each other pre-election to determine the best electoral winning combination. One begins to wonder whether a commitment to any party line can survive serving the motivated interests of one’s personal self, materially more important than ideology.

A hung Parliament sets in motion forces that are morally repugnant to the exercise of the free vote. To attain a majority Atal Behari Vajpayee’s BJP government is now engaged in a scramble to influence smaller parties and individuals, who on their part want a binding commitment from the would-be suitors for their special interests or more directly, money and lots of it. This democratic farce of “horse-trading”, is not confined to India or South Asia but is a common practice in most third world countries. Accountability, which is at the heart of the democratic process, is lost at the very outset when stepping into the governance mode. Having violated ethical principles and compromised on election promises to accommodate potential allies in reaching for power, the incumbents are ill-suited as responsible mentors of any exercise in accountability. The result is that increasingly governments rely on the rewards of corruption for survival. In some countries it has become a socially acceptable thing to be blatantly corrupt i.e. the Marcos Syndrome where the rulers brazenly flaunt illegal wealth knowing that a significant part of the gullible public will keep on believing their denials about corruption. Faced with retribution in various forms if they do not conform, senior government functionaries are now finding it more profitable to join in with the loot, some even falling over themselves to ingratiate themselves with the political rulers by teaching them how to increase their looting of the public till while carefully skirting around the laws of the land. A democracy without accountability is akin to dictatorship, a dictatorship that does not compromise on nepotism and corruption would then logically be better than such a democracy. Given that dictatorship almost never accepts accountability about itself, the whole thing slides into a Catch-22 situation.

Obviously this state of affairs cannot persist for long. Pakistan and Bangladesh have the dubious advantage of having gone through Martial Laws, including one in Pakistan run by a civilian dictator. Frankly speaking, the rise in military power in Sri Lanka has only been avoided because the high level of literacy allows the western model of democracy a chance to function but if the civil strife continues for some time martial law can hardly be far away. India is too vast a country and democratic traditions too established for rule by the military, unfortunately given the vastness of India, the alternate to maintaining order would be social disintegration and absolute anarchy on the pattern of Somalia, Liberia, Rwanda, etc with militant groupings along ethnic, religious and sectarian lines. Authoritarian rule has no modus operandi to deal with discontent except the using of harsh measures, this invariably leads to violent protest, usually escalating into full-fledged civil strife, leading the country into anarchy. Whereas democracy is a far better condition to be in than dictatorship, if basic principles continue to be subverted as they are being done now, the end-result of both is bound to be the same.

Perhaps the only way to save democracy in third world countries is to ensure that the electoral exercise is meaningful in the context of the local environment. To do this we have to take direct and indirect measures. The direct measure involves imposing a penalty for changing loyalties, a complete ban on defection. A person who has been elected on the ticket of one party automatically must lose his/her seat if he/she chooses to leave the party. Even if a party splits, those in lesser numbers must lose their seats. Once floor-crossing is done away with, horse-trading will come to a stop as in Bangladesh where a ban on defection is incorporated into the Constitution. The indirect methods must strengthen the power of the democratic vote, which can be done by Majority Representation (MR) and Proportional Representation (PR). Even first world countries like France have done away with the “first past the post” system, i.e. if the first candidate does not have more than 50% votes, then there must be a run-off election between the first two candidates, thus providing for Majority Representation. In many constituencies in India in the recent elections where the BJP routed the Congress, the winning candidate got less than 40% of the vote in a three way (or more) fight! A majority of the electorate may not have wanted the BJP candidate as their elected representative. Maybe the BJP candidate would have won in a run-off election but at least the mandate in that case would be unquestioned. More likely the electorate would have combined to keep the BJP candidate in the cold. One refuses to believe that a vast majority of the people of any country are racist or bigoted in the manner of BJP (and its Shiv Sena ally). A clear winner in a two-way contest on MR basis would ensure that the mandate of the electorate is not ambiguous in the manner that we now see in India (and before that Pakistan and Nepal) and what we are likely to see in Bangladesh in the near future. To have legitimacy as an elected representative a majority in the constituency must vote for the candidate even though he (or she) may not be the first choice of the voters. Majority vote on MR basis is the only way to preserve the essence of democracy in any exercise of adult franchise.

In the recent Indian elections, Congress obtained 33% of the vote and got about 140 seats while BJP (and its allies) got 24% and got about 180 seats, a matter of lop-sided voter spread and demography. In Pakistan, Jamaat-i-Islami regularly gets about 6-7% of the vote but never gets more than 6-7 seats. It is only fair that parties get representation in Parliament in proportion to their votes in a general election but the MR process would make this even harder on the smaller parties as their candidates could face a complete washout in a one-to-one confrontation. Women make up more than 50% of the population but except in India never get more than 5% of the seats. And what about the Muslims in India, despite being at least 16% of the population, they will be lucky to get 20-25 seats (less than 4%) of the 545 seat Lok Sabha. Whichever way one sees it, a formula has to be devised on the basis of Proportional Representation that gives due recognition to the under-privileged as well as the smaller segments of the population so that they have a voice in Parliament. While skeptics would think it to be a complex formula it can be adapted in very simple method to the special conditions availing in each country. The PR seats could be 50% of the original total and could be allocated on voter percentage. In Pakistan we could reserve (1) 50% for women (2) 10% for minorities (proportioned according to ratio of each separate minority in the population) and (3) balance 40% to male/female candidates as per the party’s discretion. Every party that is non-religious in nature would be given seats on this basis, i.e. if the religious parties do not want to nominate, so be it, and let them face the ire of the women in the general elections. The formula in Pakistan would mean that instead of 217 seats in the National Assembly, there will be 326 seats, the additional 109 being on PR. Parties must post a list pre-election in order of priority, such persons having at least been elected to some representative office in the Local Bodies election. PPP got about 39% of the vote in the last election, on this formula they would have been liable to 85 more seats, of which 43 would have gone to women, 11 seats to minorities and the rest as per the PPP priority list, to make up the final totals. On the other hand, minorities make up about 25% of the population in India, the percentages could be formulated as (1) 50% for women (2) 25% for minorities (with at least 16% for Muslims according to population). If we were to go by the recent election, BJP, which got 170 seats (Shiv Sena got 16), would have another 85 seats of about 43 seats would go to women and 21 seats to Muslims, and so on. By expanding the scope of the democratic process we could cut into the present selective representation meant only for the powerful, influential, moneyed or bigoted individuals and parties.

The only way to save democracy is to put an immediate end to horse-trading. Our special conditions require that a simple, honest and pragmatic mechanism is developed, one that matches democracy to the real genius of the people and is best suited to the local conditions peculiar to every country.

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