nytimes
Libya
remains in deep chaos. Various militias are competing for political and
economic power, carrying out attacks and otherwise buffeting the
fragile government. Work on a new Constitution has only recently
started, well over a year later than envisioned in the political
blueprint that was drawn up as the civil war ended in October 2011.
The
assembly tasked with rewriting the Constitution was created just this
past February, and then only incompletely. Some minority groups
boycotted its election, anticipating that it would overlook their
rights. Sporadic attacks by Islamist militants in the eastern part of
the country prevented some Libyans from voting. Many more chose not to
participate because they consider political institutions — including the
General National Congress, the transitional parliament — to be
ineffectual.
This
is a shame because, despite severe security issues and other
debilitating weaknesses, Libya these days has one unexpected strength:
Most of its people agree on major issues that are often hopelessly
divisive, like minority rights, Islam and federalism.
Polling
by the University of Benghazi early last year suggested that a solid 55
percent of the population favored granting some form of recognition to
languages other than Arabic, including the long-silenced ones spoken by
the Amazigh and the Tebu, two minority groups. According to a study by
the National Democratic Institute published last November, a majority of
Libyans supported reserving seats for women and ethnic minorities in
the constitutional assembly (and some seats were, in fact, set aside for
those groups).
Other
reports last year by the National Democratic Institute and the
University of Benghazi indicated that an overwhelming majority of
Libyans believed Shariah,
the legal code of Islam based on the Quran, should be enshrined in the
new Constitution as a source of legislation (though not the only one).
And
while many Libyans, particularly in the east, support some degree of
decentralization, they favor a centralized state over full-on federalism
or any far-reaching devolution of power to the provinces.
Yet
this popular consensus hasn’t translated into concrete political
progress, mostly because the electoral rules Libya has adopted since the
end of the war have created a deficit in the representativeness of its
fledgling political institutions.
Results
in both the recent election for the constitutional assembly and the
2012 parliamentary election were largely determined by a simple
majority: Whoever garnered the most votes won, even if the tally fell
short of an absolute majority. This system was adopted after the war to
prevent certain political parties, particularly Islamist ones, from
dominating the system. But mostly it has meant that many elected
officials represent only a minority of voters.
Of
the 120 seats allocated by a simple majority in the 2012 election for
the 200-member Parliament, nearly one-third went to candidates who
secured less than 10 percent of the vote. (The other 80 seats were
allocated based on party lists via proportional representation.)
Matters
have barely improved since. In the recent constitutional assembly
election, only 10 of the 51 seats for which there are final results were
won by candidates who garnered more than 50 percent of the vote. (Some
of the assembly’s total 60 seats haven’t been filled because of those
attacks by Islamists and the boycotts in February.) Nine seats were won
with less than one quarter of the vote.
Continue reading the main story
Advertisement
The
basic problem with this system is that it results in fractious bodies
that frequently deadlock, even over issues much of the public seems to
agree on. Amazigh leaders, for example, have not been able to reach a
compromise with Arab representatives in the Congress over language
rights, among other issues. This raises concerns about the parliamentary
elections that will be held later this year: The plan for now is for
all 200 representatives to be elected directly and via simple
majorities.
The
constitutional assembly, which is currently reconsidering Libya’s
political structures, should explore alternative voting arrangements.
One option is the instant-runoff rule. Voters rank all candidates rather
than vote for their single favorite. If no candidate clears a
predetermined threshold — say, 51 percent of the total vote — the
candidate with the worst score is eliminated. Votes for that candidate
are reallocated to the voters’ second choices, and so on until a winner
emerges.
This
system would yield representatives who are accountable to a much
broader swath of the electorate than is the case under the current
simple-majority rule.
Libya
faces fiendishly difficult problems, but there is at least one tangible
issue that could be fixed fairly easily. Reforming current electoral
rules would close the gap between the people and their leaders, and make
good on an enviable asset that is rare in such fragile countries: a
popular consensus on major issues that transcends cleavages over smaller
ones.
Dirk Vandewalle is an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College. Nicholas Jahr is a freelance researcher and reporter.
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق