Pakistan elections

The (federal) Islamic Republic of Pakistan will elect its National Assembly on February 18, 2008. Georgetown Democracy & Governance students and faculty are en route to monitor the vote.

Originally scheduled for January 8, officials postponed the election after PPP leader Benazir Bhutto’s assassination on December 27, 2007.

Assuming the vote is free and fair, 342 National Assembly members will be elected under a parallel or MMM system.¹ 60 seats are reserved to women, and 10 are reserved to minority groups.²

Single-member districts are apportioned to each province by population. It seems like The proportional tier relates only to the election of women and minorities.³ Seats are allocated to those groups from each province in proportion to their respective parties’ province-wide seat shares.⁴

If this is correct, 242 seats are elected under FPP rules, and the 70 remaining seats make up the proportional tier.

100 senators are indirectly elected by territorial and provincial assemblies using the single transferable vote. Terms are six years, staggered.

1. IFES calls it list PR, and IDEA, via ACE Project, calls it parallel. Since parallel systems usually include a list PR component, I’m going with IDEA on this one.
2. The “minority” quota is according to IFES. The Pakistan Election Commission refers instead to “technocrats.”
3. See Pakistan Election Commission for district magnitudes and quotas.
4. Election Laws, Vol. I, pp 20-21 of PDF document, “Number of seats in the National Assembly,” http://www.ecp.gov.pk/content/docs/volume1.pdf

Nepal redux

I’m following news on Nepal for a project. The country is divided – politically and administratively – between Maoists and an alliance of seven parties led by the Nepali Congress.

Radio Australia has a concise summary of what’s going on:

The impoverished Himalayan nation has twice been scheduled to hold elections on its political future, but these polls have been postponed due to Maoist demands that the electoral system be reformed and the monarchy abolished.

The Maoists have threatened to take up arms again if their demands are not met.

The EU has threatened to cut off foreign aid, according to the above.

Nepal’s Interim Constitution is a Declaration of Independence from the monarchy, and it specifies how the “elections on its political future” are to be run:

(3) The Constituent Assembly shall consist of the following four hundred twenty five members, out of which four hundred and nine members shall be elected through Mixed Electoral System and sixteen members shall be nominated, as provided for in the law:-

(a) two hundred and five members shall be elected from among the candidates elected on the basis of First-Past-the-Post system from each of the Election Constituencies existed in accordance with the prevailing law before the commencement of this Constitution.

(b) two hundred and four members shall be elected under the proportional electoral system on the basis of the votes to be given to the political parties, considering the whole country as one election constituency.

(c) sixteen members to be nominated by the interim Council of Ministers, on the basis of consensus, from amongst the prominent persons of national life.

Now there is discussion of using MMP. Women of the Dalit community want 13% of seats reserved to them.

Looking at a survey by IDEA, uncertainty about their seat share drives Maoists’ desire to maximize proportionality using list PR. How much could MMP mitigate those fears? It depends on the distribution of voters across districts, which is hard to determine.

The survey indicates that the CPN (Maoist) is an emerging force but it is also a the most significant misfit among the political forces of Nepal. Out of 4,089 respondents, 934 identified themselves as being ‘close to a political party’. However 15 per cent of those who were close to a party said they were closer to the CPN (Maoist). 34 and 32 per cent associated themselves with the NC and the UML respectively.

It is too early to predict election results as 52 per cent respondents said either ‘I will decide later’ or ‘I will not tell right now’ to the question ‘Which party will you vote in the upcoming CA elections?’ Some had however already decided who they wanted to vote for. 13 per cent said they would vote for the NC while 11 per cent said that they would vote for the UML and CPN (Maoist) each.

The Carter Center’s mission in Nepal urges elections sooner than later.

Progress in Nepal?

Tomorrow was supposed to see Nepal elect a constituent assembly. But the Maoist arm of the Communist Party of Nepal has refused to participate unless Prime Minister Koirala and the Seven Party Alliance (or six, or eight, depending on whom you ask) agree to (1) abolish the monarchy and (2) use closed-list proportional representation in one district. There seems to be consensus on the first point. Now there are stirrings in the SPA of a compromise on the electoral system: mixed-member proportional.

At an interaction held in the capital on Friday, Maoist chairman Prachanda had called for reviewing their agreements with the seven (now six) parties and the government. “We are also in favour of reviewing the agreements as there are still problems in their implementation,” KC said.

President of the Janamorcha Nepal Amik Sherchan said directives of the special session of the House could be given a constitutional status by incorporating a provision in the interim constitution that “Nepal is federal democratic republic state” to be implemented by the first meeting of the constituent assembly.

Sherchan said the Maoists could be convinced on MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) system provided that the government agreed to fully implement all the agreements reached in the past.

The Maoists’ obsession with proportionality is counterintuitive given their rural base of support. One would expect them to benefit from a large nominal tier of small districts. (Indeed, that’s what we were blogging earlier this year.) Maybe they know something we don’t – that they don’t have pluralities in those districts, or that they have significant bases of support in the major towns and cities (they’re “packed” in Congress-speak). Or maybe nobody knows anything, and nobody wants to bank on the disproportionality that comes with districts any smaller than the whole country. That would make sense given the Maoists and one or two other groups have not yet faced an electoral contest.

But it doesn’t make sense for the Seven Party Alliance who’s refused to meet the Maoists’ demand – unless their refusal is grounded in something less tangible than a seat outcome (credible commitment to make the institutions work, respecting the electoral commission’s hard work to date).

Regionally disaggregated data is proving hard to find. IDEA has a helpful and recent survey of public opinion in Nepal. Here’s a summary of findings from the Nepali Times.

Here is Election Guide’s page on Nepal, but it doesn’t seem right. From what I can tell, a unicameral interim parliament is running the country according to an interim constitution. King Gyanendra and the upper house are sitting on the sidelines, and the military (generally supporting the monarchy) is quiet for now.

Here is the new electoral commission. Note how miffed they are at the Maoists’ intransigence; they’ve been laying the groundwork for an election, after all, with the help of IFES. Here’s the old EC website.

If anyone knows where to find regional data on party ID and public opinion, please leave a comment or drop an e-mail.

Nepali monarchy kaput?

Reuters India reports the Congress Party has agreed to Maoist demands for a republic. The Congress Party is Nepal’s largest faction going into a long-postponed constituent assembly.

A meeting later today will address their second key demand: full proportional representation for constituent assembly elections.

Fruits & Votes blogged the Maoists’ showdown with the interim government earlier this week. For more TDP coverage of Nepal, click the link in the tags below.

Palestine goes PR, and the people like it

Two weeks ago, Palestian President Mahmoud Abbas decreed the country’s multi-member plurality districts out of existence. According to poll results released yesterday, a majority support the change to elections under full proportional representation. Opponents call it a smack at Hamas.

Read the rest of this entry »

Controversy over voting system to derail Nepali constituent assembly?

The Wall Street Journal reports that hardliners have threatened to derail elections to the Nepali constituent assembly unless, among other things, their demand for ‘full’ proportional representation is met.

The ceasefire has held, the peace process is on track and the country is preparing for the polls in November that will elect an assembly to draft a new constitution. For the first time in Nepal’s history, the elections will be on a mixed-proportional system, so traditionally marginalized ethnic groups and castes will have some representation. That all this has been achieved with little bloodshed is remarkable…

…The Maoist leader, Chairman Prachanda, faces mounting pressure from radicals who blame him for “abandoning the revolution.” As if to appease the hardliners he presented a list of 22 demands on Aug. 24 that he said had to be fulfilled before elections. These include parliament declaring Nepal a republic before polls and conducting elections under full proportional representation.

There’s fear (not only among Maoist rebels) that various factions won’t receive maximum seat shares as the country sits down to write a constitution. Or maybe there’s uncertainty about the sizes of voting blocs, and the Maoists want a predictable electoral system.

“Full proportional representation” presumably means some form of list system.

Fruits and Votes reported in January that a non-compensatory SMD tier might have been a demand of the “rural-based Maoists,” who might have looked forward to a seat bonus in malapportioned districts. If that were true, either the tables have turned, or information flows are murky.

What’s going on with those districts, eh?