<B>Last Tango in Rodrigues may be, but not in PR</B>

In ?Last Tango in Rodrigues? (l?express, 4 Jan 2007), Mr Alain Leveque fails to appreciate the objective of Proportional Representation (PR).

The objective of PR is simple: compensate parties which receive a lower proportion of seats with respect to their share of votes. For example, in the 2002 Regional Assembly election, OPR and MR with 55 % and 44 % of the votes respectively won eight and four constituency or First-Past-The-Post seats. Clearly, MR with four out of the 12 (i.e. 33 %) constituency seats was under-represented. PR provided the mechanism to provide votes versus seats equity. The six PR seats available were distributed in such a way that the overall 18 seats (12 constituency plus six PR) were split between OPR and MR more or less in proportion to their share of the votes. With 44 % of the votes, MR deserved 44 % of the 18 seats i.e. eight seats in the Regional Assembly. Thus, MR was awarded four out of the six PR seats.

The same rationale applies to the recent 2006 election where MR now gets 55 % of the votes versus about 45 % to OPR. Thus MR deserves 10 out of the total 18 seats versus eight to OPR. Since each party has six constituency seats, this time, MR gets four PR seats and OPR the remaining two PR seats.

I do concur though with Mr Alain Leveque that one serious weakness of the PR mechanism is the inequity between ?accountable? constituency candidates and ?non-accountable? party list candidates.

Dr Singfat CHU Singapore