The statement made by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley that he plans to repeal the proportional representation provisions in the Municipal Corporations Act raises a fundamental issue of debate.
At a time when the first past-the-post system has displayed its biggest flaw on the world stage in relation to the election of the next United States President who won the Electoral College, but not the popular vote, in order to become the President on January 20 next, why would this country want to undo a reform that now allows that no vote will be wasted ever again in local government?
Proportional representation has had its critics over the years, but the introduction of that reform into local government in this country has removed the winner-take-all approach for the allocation of aldermen in local government corporations.
Before 2013, any political party that won a majority of seats in any corporation was entitled to nominate all of the aldermen in that council. With the introduction of proportional representation in 2013, political parties can only earn aldermen in any corporation if the votes of the electorate permit them to have those aldermen.
While it will take some time for people to understand any new electoral reform as a reform in its own right, it does guarantee that the votes of people who live in any corporation will be counted twice. Their votes will be counted as usual in the respective electoral districts where voters reside. After those councillors have been declared elected, the EBC will then tally the votes cast for each party in every corporation and then allocate the seats of the aldermen in each corporation to the political parties in proportion to the votes cast.
In order to win one of the four seats reserved for aldermen in each of the councils, a party will have to win at least 25 per cent of the votes cast in that corporation. The mathematical formula associated with the Hare method of proportional representation is the formula that was and will be used to do the calculations for the allocation of the seats for aldermen.
This has brought the highest possible level of legitimacy to local government since all positions in the councils are now filled on the basis of elections and not a combination of elections and the principle of nomination.
In many respects, the principle of nomination for the Senate and, prior to 2013, for the aldermen in local government councils was a holdover from the era of Crown Colony government when all positions in Legislative Councils were appointed by the governor in the name of the Crown.
T&T was very wedded to that idea, and apparently still is in many respects, which leads one to suspect that the desire to take the country backwards to that system in local government is where the energy for abolishing this reform is coming from.
Prime Minister Rowley spoke about the challenges faced by the PNM in having people quarrel about why they were not chosen as aldermen from the lists that are required to be supplied to the EBC on nomination day. Political parties can use the list of aldermen to defer the opportunities to serve in corporations for people who were not selected as candidates for the positions of councillor in any corporation. Very valuable talent can be preserved in the list of names that has to be provided that has as many names as there are elected councillor positions to be filled.
A political party will earn the right to extract as many as four names from their list if they win enough of the votes to do so and have reserves in the event of any future changes in membership among the ranks of the aldermen who belong to their party.
When Darryl Smith was elected as the MP for Diego Martin Central, he was required to resign his position as an alderman in the Diego Martin Regional Corporation. He was replaced by Sigler Jack whose name was on the unused portion of the list that had been submitted to the EBC by the PNM in 2013.
When Raymond Tim Kee resigned as mayor of Port-of-Spain and as an alderman on the Port-of-Spain City Corporation in February this year, he was replaced by Anthony Ferguson whose name was on the unused portion of the list that had been submitted by the PNM on nomination day in 2013.
The reality is that in both cases the system worked to keep both corporations stable at a time when resignations came from their ranks. The transparency came from the fact that any political party that is put in that position must only confine themselves to the names that they submitted on nomination day for the election in which those councillors and aldermen were intended to serve. The only way that there would be a deviation is if all the names on the respective lists were exhausted in which case, the political party whose alderman is to be replaced would then make a different nomination to fill their vacancy.