Shhhh...!

I’ve been out of the office all week, and today I spent most the day at Parliament, listening to testimony on the proposed electoral law. Highlights included a speech emphasizing that women knew both how to cook and clean. Was it tongue-in-cheek? I have no idea, but the Parliamentarians cracked up.

It reminded me of a Concord Academy assembly, with the popular kids (the representatives of Fretilin, the majority party) all turned around in their seats, openly chatting with their cohorts and making fun of the presenters’ accents.

After the first session, Telibert, Karlito and I joined the Parliament members in an adjacent trailer for a nice meal of rice, grilled fish, sautéed greens and water buffalo. Enak sekali!

To be a bit technical, the elections here are single-constituency and use lists (like elections in Iraq). This means that everyone in Timor Leste sees the exact same ballots imprinted with the names of political parties. This is quite unlike in the US where elected officials are identified with (and by) the places that elect them.

Prior to elections all the parties submit ranked list of candidates for publication. If there are ten seats in Parliament, and one party gets 80% of the vote and the other party gets 20% of the vote, the electoral formula or algorithm should allot seats to the first eight people listed on the dominant party's list and two remaining seats to the first two people listed on the minority party's list.

With lots of seats and lots of parties, the electoral formula becomes more complicated and less intuitive. Currently, there are big fights over whether or not a list must receive 5% of the vote to gain a seat. This threshold is proposed by the ruling party, and here's why.

To quote at length from the smuggled UN document:
"[without a threshold] a political party obtaining around 0.6% of the national vote would obtain a seat. Using this approach, the 2001 vote would have given 36 of 65 seats to FRETILIN, 6 to PD... Results would have been quite proportional, with FRETILIN getting 58.46% of the seats with 57.68% of the vote."

With the 5% threshold, the 2001 elections would have looked quite different. With 57.68% of the vote, Fretilin would have gained over 70% of the seats.

So that electoral formula was the focus of attention, as was the question of quotas for the inclusion and distribution* of women on lists. NDI is looking at some other issues, and I probably will not go back to listen to more testimony until next week when the NGOs start to offer their comments. Going to Parliament was exciting and, then, kind of boring. The Parliamentarians had it right to toss in a little get-back-to-the-kitchen humor.



*Distribution is important because, for example, the law could require 10% of the list to be female, but the party could group the females at the bottom of the list. Unless the party totally dominates, these women would never get seats. The above picture is the Parliament, note both the fancy chairs and mics (from AUSAid) and the low attendance (25%).