Two antipodal doses of Proportional Representation (PR) have emerged from the deliberations of the Select Committee on Electoral Reform. Proposal A, championed by Mr Collendavelloo, calls for compensatory PR with the PR seats attributed to candidates nominated on party lists. Proposal B, put forward by Mr Leung Shing, supports non-compensatory PR and it stipulates that best losing constituency candidates should be the recipients of the PR seats. Mr Collendavelloo prescribes up to 30 PR seats while Mr. Leung Shing and his party leader advocate 10 PR seats. Clearly, propositions A and B are poles apart in substance (overall number of seats) and form (mode of seat attribution).

I will argue that the option ?Vote x, Elect x+1?, labelled Model E by the Sachs Commission, represents a viable entente between these two radically-different proposals. Essentially, Model E generalises our Best Loser Scheme and it will eradicate its communal connotation. It will call for 21 extra seats, which is midway in the 10 to 30 range of PR seats. This concept of ?extra constituency elect? avoids the moral hazards engendered by party lists. Simulations of the past 8 general elections indicate that it is as effective as compensatory PR in reconciling votes and seats.

The examples of Seychelles and Mexico have been cited by Mr Collendavelloo. I will use them to motivate the quantitative differences between compensatory and non-compensatory PR. In the 1998 general election, the Front Progressiste du Peuple Seychellois of President Albert René registered 61.71% of the votes and ended up with 88% of the seats overall; in the 2002 election, it attracted 54.3% of the votes and 67.6% of the seats. In the July 2000 legislative election in Mexico, the Alliance for Change tallied a leading 39.14% of the votes and 44.2% of the seats. Earlier in 1994, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (IRP) won 50% of the votes and was capped at 60% of the overall seats, the maximum allowed to any party under the Mexican Constitution.

Both Seychelles and Mexico apply a dose of non-compensatory or Parallel PR. This works as follows. Seychelles has 25 First Past the Post (FPTP) seats and 9 PR seats. In 1998, the winning party swept all 25 FPTP seats. Thereafter, it was awarded its share of the PR seats commensurate with its votes, that is .6171 x 9 or 5 PR seats, thereby bringing its total to 30 seats or 88% of the 34 seats. In the 1994 elections in Mexico, IRP won 277 out of the 300 FPTP seats. It then obtained 23 and not 100 of the 200 PR seats, thanks to the 60% cap imposed.

Had compensatory PR (Mr Collendavelloo?s proposal) been applied in the 1998 Seychelles election, the entitlement of the winning party would have been about .6171 times the combined number of FPTP and PR seats (25+9) or about 21 seats. Since it already had 25 FPTP seats, it would have therefore received no PR seats and thereby stayed at 25 seats. The 9 PR seats would have been split 6 to 3 respectively to Mr Ramakalawan?s United Opposition and Mr Mancham?s Democratic Party by virtue of their 26% and 12% share of the votes. The same argument echoes for the 1994 Mexican general election, namely no PR seats for the winning party due to its outrageously disproportionate number of FPTP seats.

<B>Curing cancer with panadol</B>

MSM has now stated its support for non-compensatory PR. The examples from Seychelles and Mexico show that parallel PR hardly reduces the yawning gap between votes and overall seats when a party has a disproportionate share of the FPTP seats. Worse still, non-compensatory PR has the perverse effect of increasing the lead acquired via FPTP seats when a winning party receives 50% or more of the votes! In the 1994 Seychelles election, a 25-0 FPTP score became 30-4 after non-compensatory PR. If non-compensatory PR had been applied in the past 8 general elections in Mauritius, it would have barely reduced the median vote v/s seat discrepancy from 22.7% to 18.5%, assuming the award of 21 PR seats. This is akin to a dose of panadol to cure cancer!

Politicians have vested interests and they can be severely myopic. Seat attribution being a zero-sum game, the MSM should also ponder about its overall representation in those elections in which it will not do well. One gains seats at the expense of others. Remember 1995? An equitable translation of votes into seats is in the interest of every stakeholder in our diverse democracy ? seats should accord more or less with the votes.

The main argument of the MSM for supporting non-compensatory PR is that the outcome of the current FPTP election format should not be reversed. Is that valid? Consider an HSC candidate who tops most of the papers that he or she writes. Does that candidate deserve to be a laureate? Not necessarily, because he or she may do poorly in other papers and thereby not end up as the top candidate overall. This is precisely one objective of electoral reform ? to reward overall and not selective performance.

Assuming a 2-party slug-out in our current FPTP electoral format, a party can in theory win 36 seats outright in the 12 constituencies with the fewest voters (excluding Rodrigues) and record a mere 27% of the total votes. More realistically however, its total votes will be in the 35-50% range. Clearly then, the fewer the PR seats, the more likely will that party survive as the overall victor. Assuming the party records 45% of the votes and there are 10 PR seats, it will obtain about 4 of them and thereby 40 out of the 80 seats overall. With more PR Seats, say 20 or 30, that party will obtain less than 50% of the overall seats and it may eventually end up in the Opposition. This is the real reason underlying the MSM?s support for only 10 PR seats! The new-found rationale about financial burden arising from more PR seats does not wash.

<B>Uniformity of treatment</B>

The MSM cites the 1987 elections where the MSM-PTR-PMSD and MMM-MTD-FTS alliances respectively won 39 and 21 FPTP seats. But it does not mention that each of these alliances split the votes about 50%: 50%. Under non-compensatory PR, both alliances would have been entitled to the same number of PR seats. The absolute difference in the number of seats would therefore remain at 18. This again highlights the impotence of parallel PR at toning down the excess of FPTP seats attribution.

The other example cited was the recent election to the Rodrigues Regional Assembly when OPR and MR respectively obtained 8 and 4 FPTP seats while securing 56% and 44% of the votes. After compensatory PR was applied based on 6 PR seats, the final outcome was 10 seats for OPR and 8 for MR. Subsequently Mr Speville stepped down to allow OPR?s leader Mr Serge Clair to stand in a by-election. The MSM points out that had Mr Serge Clair lost, there would have been a deadlock with OPR and MR each having 9 seats. The point that MSM again misses is that in such a scenario the votes of OPR and MR would have converged to about 50% each and thereby 9-9 would have been a just outcome. Performance needs to be looked at holistically and not selectively!

Compensatory PR (Proposal A) will align seats and votes very closely. My qualms about this mode of PR reside on its form. There are severe moral hazards inherent in attributing PR seats to candidates on a Party List. Succinctly put, our country does not need further inflammation of the likes of ?critère religieux? or ?critère social? etc. In our diverse society, uniformity of treatment is fundamental. There can?t be two lists of candidates, uneven efforts and uneven rewards. Much has been said about the potential of PR lists to bring more women and technocrats into politics. This is exaggerated. By concept, the winning party will receive few if any PR seats at all. Most PR seats will go to under-represented opposition parties. Will those women and technocrats elected on the party lists of opposition parties be able to mold policies? Electoral reform should bring meaningful and not token representation, so as to look good on some statistics.

A viable middle ground between Proposals A and B is to award one extra seat to each of our 21 constituencies, e.g. ?Vote 3, Elect 4? for the 20 constituencies in Mauritius and ?Vote 2, Elect 3? in Rodrigues. This form of Limited Vote, which I call ?Block+1?, does not have much of a history since multi-seat constituencies are not common worldwide. But when simulated on the past 8 general elections in Mauritius, its reformatory effect is significant. It would have brought down the current median 22.5% discrepancy in seats v/s votes to 6.3%, very close to the 6.2% for compensatory PR. Contrary to some unsubstantiated criticisms, it is neither crude nor random. In this electoral format, the "extra constituency elect" is equal to the other elects and not a "Best Loser". It clearly aligns votes and seats time and time again in the Mauritian electoral context.

<B>Reward party competitiveness</B>

?Block+1? has many merits. It will call for no changes in the traditional way of voting. It retains constituency representation and the elements of accountability, transparency, meritocracy, and it treats all candidates uniformly. ?Block+1? stands out among all electoral formats as it has the unique ability to reward party competitiveness nationwide. Consider again the scenario of a 2-party contest. Suppose a party sweeps all the seats in 12 ridings and furthermore it places its candidates in the fourth position in the remaining 8 ridings in Mauritius. Under ?Block+1?, that party will then obtain (12x3)+8=44 seats, a clear majority and most likely a just result. The award of an extra constituency seat in each riding may be made subject to a threshold vote level, say one third of the average of the first 3 elects or 5% of the national votes, so as not to deny the winning party its right to amend the Constitution should it be acclaimed with 75% or more of the votes.

The idea of a free vote in the National Assembly to decide the dose of PR is most welcome. Since it will likely end in stalemate, the ?Block+1? option should be given the serious consideration that it failed to attract from the Sachs Commission. We may even follow in the footsteps of New Zealand and envisage a referendum on the issue. Indeed, letting the people decide on their most fundamental governance will fit the theme of Republic Day this year, ?Ene sel nasion, ene sel destin?!

Dr Singfat CHU Singapore