Fixing the next election

The Nation reports on events in parliament which see the Democrat Party fixing rules that will clearly benefit them in any election in the future:

The ruling Democrat Party won a narrow victory yesterday in its bid to push for changes in the numbers of constituency and party-list MPs that critics say would give the Democrats an advantage in the upcoming general election.

After a heated debate and a brief war of wits, the joint ad hoc parliamentary committee vetting constitutional amendments yesterday voted 18-17 to reduce the number of constituency MPs to 375 and increase the number of party-list MPs from the system of proportional representation to 125. At present, 400 MPs are from constituencies and 80 are from the party-list system representing eight provincial zones.

The Democrats favour the 375-125 formula, which is in the original draft amendment that passed the first parliamentary reading in November, while the smaller coalition partners back the 400-100 formula.

It is well-known that in the last election, the Democrat Party did much better on the party list vote. This is no more than a Democrat Party fiddling of the election system to try to ensure they have a win in any new election. It seems that bludgeoning, shooting, censoring and jailing opponents is insufficient, so they have decided to arrange an election system that suits them.

You’d think that all those human rights activists, democracy activists, NGOs and so on would be up in arms about such a blatant fix. Let’s see what they say. PPT will be surprised if the so-called Democrats don’t get their way. The only real opposition is likely to be from coalition partners who will lose on the Democrat Party weighting.