Political Twist: A Combined Electoral System in Myanmar

Political Twist: A Combined Electoral System in Myanmar Nicole Loring Northern Illinois University Published with the Indo Pacific Review December 1, 2014

Preparations for Myanmar’s next general election, to be held approximately one year from now, have begun in earnest. Myanmar’s chairmanship of the 2014 ASEAN summit coincided with President Obama’s second visit to the country in as many years. The 2014 by-elections, scheduled to be held this November, were cancelled in September in order to allow Myanmar’s many political parties to concentrate their efforts on next year’s general election, a move supported by the National League for Democracy (NLD). In an effort to make next year’s general election more organized and inclusive than the 2010 general election, the electoral commission has started to compile a list of eligible voters to prevent wrongful exclusions of voters. However, one issue that keeps rising to the foreground is whether Myanmar will switch from a majoritarian, first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system to a proportional representation (PR) system. On November 14, Lower House Speaker U Shwe Mann rejected a proposal to hold a vote on whether to change the electoral system from FPTP to PR on the basis that changing the electoral system is considered unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court. This means that elections for the Lower House will be run under the same FPTP system as the 2010 elections. This week, in a surprising twist to the ongoing debate over the potential switch to a national PR system, Myanmar’s Upper House approved the change to a nationwide PR system. The implication of this vote is that Myanmar will have two different voting systems in the Upper and Lower Houses of Parliament during the 2015 elections, the first general elections since the unfair and unfree election of 2010 which led to the development of the new democracy in Myanmar. Elections under a combined electoral system have taken place in other democracies such as Japan, Germany, and Mexico, but certainly not in such a nascent democracy as Myanmar. A national switch from a majoritarian FPTP system to a PR system has been a hot topic for debate in Myanmar for the last few months, and would greatly influence the future of electoral politics in Myanmar, and especially the political participation of underrepresented ethnic minorities within the country. In the current FPTP system, whoever wins the majority of votes for a constituency wins the seat to represent the entire constituency in parliament. In a PR system, the number of parliament seats won by each party is proportionate to the number of votes each party receives. In news that may have overshadowed the dismissal of the PR system proposal, amendments to Articles 59(f) and 436 of the Myanmar Constitution also failed to pass this week, meaning that the constitutional articles which bar Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from running for the presidency and

the article which guarantees the military 25 percent of the seats in parliament will stay intact for the 2015 general elections. U Shwe Mann stated in a press conference that any changes made to the 2008 Constitution, drafted by the military junta at the time, will not be enacted until after the 2015 elections. Part of the ongoing criticism of Myanmar’s nascent democracy revolves around the underrepresentation of ethnic minorities and ethnic-minority parties in parliament, which can be attributed, at least in part, to the current majoritarian system. If a candidate from an ethnic minority party runs against a candidate from the NLD, a much more well-known and popular party, chances are that the candidate from the NLD will win. With about seventy political parties in Myanmar, the problem is exacerbated by multiple ethnic parties splitting the votes of the population they aim to represent. For instance, Kayin voters who want to be represented by a Kayin ethnic party must choose between the Kayin People’s Party (KPP), the Union Kayin League (UKL), and the Kayin State Democracy and Development Party (KSDDP). With so many ethnic parties splitting the votes of ethnic minorities, many of the Kayin parties have failed to gain representation in parliament. In addition, due to voters’ perceptions of not wanting to “waste” a vote, voters whose interests may be better represented by an ethnic party will nonetheless choose to vote for a large, general-interest party like the NLD. This also explains the resistance of some of the parties in parliament against a proportional representation system. The initial suggestion to make the switch to a PR system was proposed by the National Democratic Force (NDF) and was taken up by their ally, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). However, the NLD has opposed to switching to a PR system, citing concerns that it was a tactic being used by the USDP to dilute support for the NLD and make it more difficult for the NLD to win a large majority of the votes in the 2015 elections. Interestingly, a number of ethnic members of parliament also opposed the measure, ostensibly due to a similar fear of the potential loss of their parliament seats in 2015. The Tatmadaw has remained silent on whether they support a change to a PR system. In the Upper House vote this week, 138 lawmakers approved to change to a PR system, while 24 members of parliament, mostly members of the NLD and some ethnic minority parties, voted against the measure. What may be most interesting is why MPs from ethnic minority parties, who stand to gain the most from a switch to a PR system, voted against the change. Those ethnic minority MPs who voted against the PR system may have done it in solidarity with the NLD, or because they do not understand the positive implications a PR system would have for their constituencies. Ongoing tensions between the government and ethnic minority groups in Myanmar is attributed largely to the perception that the concerns of ethnic minority constituencies are not being represented in parliament. A nationwide PR system would go a long way towards addressing these concerns, although this new change will cause some logistical and voter comprehension problems with a general election less than one year away. With just one general election under their belt since the development of the 2008 constitution, Myanmar’s new combined electoral system may cause major issues at the polls, as voters will have to figure out yet again how their vote counts in a country which still hasn’t hammered out all of its current electoral procedures.

It still remains to be seen whether the Constitutional Court will rule that, like in the Lower House, a change to a PR system is unconstitutional for the Upper House. However, if the switch to a PR system is approved by the Court, Myanmar’s voters will have to puzzle out an entirely new combined electoral system during next year’s general elections. Perhaps this new system will serve as a good compromise between the concerns of the NLD over losing seats to the USDP and the ethnic minority parties who desperately want more seats in order to better represent their constituencies. If this change does take place, it will mean that the 224-seat Upper House may become more representative for ethnic minority parties, while the 440-seat Lower House will retain the same system that may allow the NLD a major victory at the polls. There are a myriad of issues facing Myanmar’s still-developing democracy, such as the 25 percent quota of seats for military members in the Parliament and the constitutional articles preventing Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from the presidency, which still need to be addressed. This decision to create a combined electoral system in Myanmar’s parliament less than one year before the 2015 elections may prove to be a foolhardy blunder in Myanmar’s roadmap to democracy, or a compromise that will provide both the NLD and ethnic minority parties with more agency.