By Sunny Ntayombya, 16 September 2013
Kigali — Rwanda votes in parliamentary
elections today. Our blogger deconstructs the democratic voting system
and, in so doing, questions whether the newly elected MPs will really be
representing the interests of the people.
5,953,531 eligible voters have the opportunity to decide the
composition of Rwanda's House of Deputies, Parliament's lower chamber.
Vying for those 53 seats today are the Liberal Party, the Social
Democratic Party, the Party for Progress and Concord, the Centrist
Democratic Party, the Social Party Imberakuri and the ruling Rwanda
Patriotic Front coalition (which includes the tiny Ideal Democratic
Party and the Socialist Party).
Elections for the 24 women's seats, two youth seats and one disabled seat take place on Wednesday.
All very normal...
But what sets these elections apart from those in other countries is how the members of parliament are voted.
In most democracies, MPs are selected by the constituents. Each
constituency is guaranteed a seat in parliament and the area politicians
are expected to convince voters in that area to cast their ballots for
them.
Rwanda's voting system
In Rwanda it is done very differently.
First of all, there are no individual constituencies. MPs are chosen at the provincial level.
Secondly, Rwandans don't vote for specific candidates. Rather, each
party has a long list of candidates that it presents to the public; the
candidates at the top of each list are the party's best and brightest
and those lower down the list, less so. After the votes are cast, each
party sends to parliament a number of those on the list in direct
proportion to the percentages garnered during the election.
So, if the RPF ruling party wins 50 percent of the national vote, it
gets to choose the top, say, 25 candidates on its list of potential MPs.
This system aims to ensure that MPs take their cues from a national
audience and not a local one. You will often hear them say it leads to
the representation of all Rwandans and not just Rwandans from a specific
area or constituency. That is what is supposed to happen - in theory.
But this system is still debated by many, including by this writer.
Lack of accountability
One of the major qualms I have with the system is its lack of
accountability. In other countries, if you don't like the manner in
which an MP is representing you, you can vote him or her out of office.
They have the responsibility to represent the constituency's interests
first and foremost.
In Rwanda, however, MPs represent the party's interests first and the people's last.
A few months ago, MPs passed an amendment in the labour law that
reduced fully paid maternity leave from three months to six weeks. Would
this have gone through if MPs had to face the wrath of an enraged
electorate? Perhaps. But there would have been a lot more public debate
about it. And this debate would have been led by wary MPs who would be
unwilling to go against public opinion.
While public opinion and populism on the African continent sometimes
lead to discriminatory laws, such as those criminalizing homosexuality
(happily, Rwanda's MPs chose not to criminalize it, despite the
country's conservative nature), there is still a place for it in our
political process. To what extent, though?
Over the next three days, especially, Rwanda faces the challenge of attempting to find this balance.