Know your local electoral system and implications

THE Local Government Electoral Reforms Act No. 17 of 2017 introduced a new Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system for elections at the local level in Sri Lanka but also in Asia.

- By Dr. Sujata Gamage

The first local election carried under the new Act was held in 2018. The election scheduled for 2023 will use the same method.

The Mixed-Member Proportional method is misinterpreted even by experienced politicians or policy analysts. To the voters, local election is now simply a matter of putting an X against the name of a Party or an independent group and its symbol, contesting in one’s designated “ward” within one’s local council. But what happens after votes are counted is a more complex story.

In 2011, under the Proportional Representation with preferential votes electoral system that was applicable then, 53 members were returned for the Colombo Municipal Council (or CMC). In 2018, under the new MMP method, a newly delimited set of 49 wards returning 66 members formed the basis of the electoral system. Here 66 members representing 49 wards were returned first-past-the-post basis, and another 53 at-large members were returned from a second Party List, for a total of 119 members. How did the number of councillors increase from 53 in 2011 to 119 in 2018?

To clear the right-from-the-start, I should state that the number of councillors in the CMC increased not because of the MMP method per se. The number increased because the same number of wards determined for a mixed-member electoral system legislated in 2012 was used without change for a mixed member system using a different formula which was legislated in 2017. The problem can be solved, if needed, by a new delimitation to reduce the number of wards, but for the time being, no amount to do anything about the number of councillors that we will be electing.