How to achieve a multi-ethnic legislature almost reflecting the national ethnic composition is one of the major issues before the Constituent Assembly (CA) Committee on Determination of the Form of Legislature. Though the committee has held 20 meetings till Feb. 24 covering different themes under its terms of reference, there has not been any specific focus on this issue.

The committee is aware that attempts to achieve diversity and pluralism in politics without an effective electoral system have been a dismal failure in many developing countries, and in most of them, an uphill battle. The challenge is not just to give effect to the aspirations of a multicultural society, but also to make sure that basic democratic values do not run off in a bid to meet these aspirations.

At times, even if the electoral and spatial integration policies are driven by the objective of enhancing multiracialism, their actual workings may not adequately advance the development of norms and values that would be truly supportive of the need for a multiracial legislature and an abiding commitment to multiracialism.

The Interim Constitution of Nepal adopted both the first past the post (FPP) system based on single member constituency and the proportional system of representation to elect the CA members to draft a new constitution for the country. The FPP system applied only to 240 out of the total 361 members. The later system, adopted at the insistence of the Maoists and the Madheshi parties, was quite one-dimensional.

The reason is electors were allowed to vote for a political party, which came out with their list of candidates, rather than voting in a single member constituency for a specific candidate. All the votes were counted and each party received seats in the same proportion as the votes it won throughout the country. Many of these parties were able to send their men and women to the CA, but the people who were so keen about proportionality had very few representatives in them.

In the system that was adopted, voters had little effective choice over candidates. Many of the candidates were first timers with little political experience, and some of them had no local connections even if they liked politics. Many women who were elected were not born in this country, and lacked enough motivation for the great job they were supposed to perform. These lists did little to ensure fair representation for traditionally under-represented groups in society. Even if proportionality had been maintained, the system apparently kept power out of the hands of voters and firmly in the hands of the party leadership.

If this system is allowed to remain for another term as well, it is possible that political parties will be formed along ethnic or religious lines to incite tribalism, communalism or religious bigotry to get votes. The system will not be able to stop such parties to appeal to their own ethnic groups, religious slogans, and parochial interests and that eventually will make democracy a hostage of extremist parties: each race or religion pushing for its own space till they collide. It has also been argued that this type of proportional representation does not tend to produce stable majorities, thereby making effective government difficult.

The available models of electoral systems for the people who want a change can be very puzzling, not least because there are so many varieties with some of them involving complicated procedures. But nobody can dispute the fact that whatever happened with the CA elections, the voting system that the new constitution is going to adopt must not be of the same type.

Nepal may consider adopting a dual system of single member constituency (SMC) and group representation constituency (GRC) for its parliamentary election. The first system, as usual, can be applied in some hill and mountain districts which are small and have limited populations. The second system can be applied in the remaining multi-member districts.

In the SMC system, a voter simply puts an “X” next to the name of the candidate he or she supports. The candidate who gets the most votes wins, regardless of whether he or she has polled more than 50 percent of the vote. Once the members have been elected individually, the party with the most seats in parliament, regardless of whether or not it has a majority across the country, normally forms the next government. Nepal has been familiar with the SMC system from a long time. This system is the easiest to practice and is very democratic in its operation.

As far as the GRC system is concerned, it is designed to improve the poor performance of the proportional electoral system under the Interim Constitution. GRCs are large enough to choose several members of the legislature for each constituency to represent them proportionally. The justification for GRCs is that they allow contesting political parties to field multi-ethnic candidates for each constituency. A GRC must reflect the ethnic composition of the local population in each electoral district besides dividing the available seats between men and women.

The GRC system is politically neutral because whichever political party fields a strong team will have a good chance of winning. If party leaders offer poor candidates, they fail squarely. The group succeeds or fails, but always as a mixed ethnic group contesting the elections together. They operate with a plurality voting system, meaning that the party with the largest share of the votes wins all the seats in the GRC. It maintains the requirements of competitive politics.

The GRC is a simple system to understand. Voters get to say which party should form the next government. It tends to lead to a two-party system. The system tends to produce single party governments, which are strong enough to create legislation and tackle the country’s problems without relying on the support of any other party.

Nepal may adopt the SMC or GRC systems with the necessary adjustments for the election to the House of Representatives. It can then restore the single transferable voting system for the election to the Upper House, which Nepal had been practicing under the 1990 Constitution. Together, they can meet Nepal’s urgent requirements of democracy and multiculturalism.

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