Prime Minister Mia Mottley on Tuesday unveiled a series of significant proposals aimed at overhauling Barbados’ electoral and parliamentary system, including increasing the number of constituencies and revising boundary rules, as outlined in the long-awaited 2024 Parliamentary Reform Commission report.
As she laid the long-awaited report in the House of Assembly, Mottley outlined a number of far-reaching proposals contained in the report, along with her own views on what should come next for the country’s democratic evolution.
Among the PRC’s key recommendations is an increase in the number of seats in the House of Assembly and ensuring the number of parliamentary seats is always an odd number to avoid ties, particularly in cases where the Speaker of the House is appointed and does not vote.
“The Electoral and Boundaries Commission is due to review the seats and their composition,” Mottley said.
She highlighted concerns raised by the Leader of the Opposition about community disruption due to boundary lines cutting through neighbourhoods.
“I agree with that,” she noted. “But I also agree that the continuous evolution of boundaries will always cause problems and disruption.”
Mottley observed that the last boundary review was conducted in 2003, but significant demographic changes—particularly population growth in St George, Christ Church, and St Philip—have created wide disparities in constituency sizes.
While the commission explored the possibility of allowing Barbadians living abroad to vote, it ultimately stopped short of endorsing the idea.
The prime minister contended that eventually, the introduction of electronic voting, which would facilitate diasporic voting, will be tabled, but the country as a whole has to be “comfortable with that” because of the complications involved.
Mottley said: “The commission does not at this point recommend diasporic voting, because even though it is desirable, as they said, the complexity and the risk of so doing are simply too great for it to happen. What they said, and I believe it’s a minority opinion, is that there should be one diasporic seat in Parliament, similar to what other parliaments have, in which parties would canvas, and one MP will be voted for by the diaspora, to represent the views and interest of the diaspora.”
“I am not going to fool you,” the PM said. “At some point I have no doubts somebody will introduce electronic voting in the country. But I know that it has to be at a time when the country as a whole is comfortable with that. Let me say upfront this government is not that one at this point, unless there is a huge outcry from the public for that to be included.”
Commenting on the recommendation of the PRC on proportional representation, which was preferred by many people in their submissions, Mottley noted that the commission sided with the current first-past-the-post system.
She said that although proportional representation would “give voice to a large bloc of the electorate who may have supported a single party”, the PRC noted that it frequently leads to unstable minority governments or hamstrung governments, and in the worst case, often causes the collapse of governments at an early stage.
Mottley also addressed the recommendation for the introduction of National MPs to augment the current constituency Members of Parliament.
“In this particular instance, the PRC provided a mechanism for national MPs that we don’t necessarily agree with, but which, nevertheless, had been placed before us, because it was simply a 50 per cent distribution of additional MPs on the basis effectively of a party list to go between parties,” the PM said.
Turning to the role of the Speaker of the House, Mottley expressed strong personal support for transitioning to an appointed Speaker, rather than one elected from among sitting Members of Parliament.
She said: “I feel strongly that our system would function better if we had a speaker appointed rather than elected, and I believe while the commission did not recommend a change to the current system, I am almost certain that the party to which I belong will want to see the appointment of a speaker going forward.”
(SB)
The post New parliamentary seats, but diaspora vote a ‘risk’ appeared first on Barbados Today.