Bianjie

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Four-leaf clover government pushes for another electoral reform ahead of the election next year
11 March 5732



It has been a little bit more than a decade after then-premier Semken Tan has presented an electoral reform, which returned the old parallel mixed electoral system, as opposed to the fully proportional one, whereas the new-old parallel had 60% of seats be elected in single-member constituencies, and the rest divided to nine proportional blocs based on existing provinces. The decision was made with a number of constructive criticism points, stating that this system, while based on noble ideas of giving territories their representation in the national parliament, would also create an unfair advantage to the ruling Socialist People's Party, which did happen in the end, when SPP had won its biggest seat share in the history.

Now, the new coalition government has pledged to change that during the electoral campaign, promising to introduce an electoral system that would keep the existing single-member constituencies, votes for which will now hold the name of "first" or "direct" votes, allowing for the territorial representation to continue, but would amend the allocation of the rest of the seats from the existing provincial blocks, to the "compensatory" seats across the provinces based on the votes, which will be named as "second" votes, in order to maintain proportionality of seats based on those very same provincial block votes. "This reform does not change anything drastically and radically, it is simply making sure that no party is able to manipulate the elections by winning it deserves, by winning majorities without having a majority public support, by holding the political forces accountable", said premier Irifune. And indeed, the new amended electoral code is supposed to be the more proportional and democratic version of the existing system, and yet there are a few flaws with it that some spectators and observers had noticed already. For once, parties could lose their single-member constituency seats, if the second votes quota allocation be insufficient to the amount of constituencies won, and in that case, some constituencies will be simply not represented. However, members de facto elected in these seats will be given priority in a case of provincial list MPs resignation or other reasons for existing legislature throughout the term.

Another point of contention is even harsher rules for indepedent candidates, which caused another wave of discussion, as the proposed changes wish to get rid of independents completely without restricting independent candidatures altogether. According to premier Irifune, lesser independents will mean more participation in party politics, and stronger political culture. And the last, highly important change, is the threshold for seat allocation: a party must achieve 3% of the second votes to be a part of the seat allocation. "Initially, we planned a 5% threshold, and it still is in plans, however, it was deemed quite undemocratic and unfair to smaller parties to limit the representation to such high levels", the premier said. Indeed, if 5% threshold is installed, at least three parties would not be represented if taking 5728 result, which would leave almost 12% of votes unrepresented, including Horizon, Shindoto and Act Now! parties.

With a year before the election, the new system will clearly cause some speculation, confusion and problems, but the government is ready to face them, premier says. State Electoral Administration will fund public service announcements across the nation, and hold information campaigns to inform the populace about the changes to the system, if approved, which they will most likely, as all but the SPP parties seem to be on board with the changes, as it would clearly benefit them. Socialist leader, Emuqi Hegiya, said on social media that the new system is flawed, pointing out the obvious problem of the possibility of no representation of constituencies due to the insufficient amount of second votes. "If proportionality comes at the cost of some people having no official representation in the Yuan, then maybe the changes to the system are wrong, and we have to address them, before going forwards with any amendments", said Hegiya.



Gemun Post (ゲムンポスト) is a major (previously local) daily newspaper based in Gemun.
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