Can electoral system be changed

The Union of Freedom (US) is the first Czech political party that has officially declared it will seek to change the electoral system used in the country. The US is proposing to introduce a majority system in electing the parliament's lower chamber and a proportional representation system in electing the Senate. Currently the lower chamber is elected under the proportional representation system, while the Senate is elected under a majority system.

There are several reasons for the US's proposal. The most obvious one (which is also the reason that the US has publicly cited) is that the proportional representation system is responsible for political instability in the country. Under the system, voters select from political party tickets in large districts. Only those parties that gain more than 5 percent of the popular vote win seats in the parliament. There are two parties in the Czech Republic that are often described as extremist--the unreformed Communists and the far-right Republicans--that between them take up 20 percent of seats in the lower chamber, leaving the other parliamentary parties with only 80 percent of the seats. Being totally uncooperative, the extremist parties use their influence to delay the parliament's decisions on some important matters.

The right-of-center parliamentary parties have found it difficult to cooperate, often because of their leaders' personal dislikes for each other. The left-of-center Social Democrats (CSSD), on the other hand, cannot openly seek support from the unreformed Communists. A majority system would probably rectify some of those problems. It would most likely result in eliminating extremist parties from the lower chamber, widening the political space in which democratic parties can work. The extremist parties' voters would have two options: either to resign on politics or to vote for one of the mainstream parties. Communist voters would thus, most likely, switch to the CSSD. The right-of-center parties would be forced to find a common ground.

In general, a majority system usually results in a two-party or, at best, three-party system. The US has argued that such a development would have a stabilizing effect on the Czech political system, preventing repeated political deadlocks which make it difficult to form stable governments.

The US, however, seems to be raising the idea of an electoral system change also because President Havel has advocated such a change. Given the president's high popularity, parties can only benefit from appearing to voters as being close to the president.

The president, however, advocates a more complex change of the electoral system than that proposed by the US. After the year 2,000, the Czechs will also be electing regional parliaments in fourteen regions into which the country will be subdivided. In Havel's view, the lower chamber should indeed be elected under a majority or a combined electoral system. Electoral systems used in electing regional parliaments and the Senate should be designed in such ways as to ensure that the electoral systems complement each other, and that the combination of all of those electoral system is well balanced.

In Havel's opinion, the Senate should represent the newly created regions. Currently, Senators are elected in 81 small districts which have no direct links to the 14 regions that will be created. In the president's view, each regional parliament could delegate or elect three or four senators who would represent the region in the upper chamber. Should the senators in each region be elected directly by people, a proportional representation system could be used.

Clearly, a discussion about introducing a new electoral system would accelerate, should the June elections produce yet another deadlock. But even then it may be difficult to introduce such complex changes. Small parties are likely to block any such changes, as their very existence would be threatened by the introduction of a majority electoral system. The Senate is also likely to be opposed to such changes, especially should they include changing the way in which the upper chamber is put together.

Reuters - 2. 4. 1998