The expression ‘democratic pretence’ in the title of this post is taken from the title of an article written in the Guardian Newspaper on 15th December 2001 by erstwhile leader of the prominent Hindu organisation the Sanatan Dharma Maha Saba, Sat Maharaj. The opinion piece was penned in the wake of general elections the previous Monday, 10th December 2001, which saw victory for the People’s National Movement.
The December 2001 election would turn out to be only the second instalment in a seemingly neverending and repetitive political saga. It was like a Trini remake of the movie Groundhog’s Day where Bill Murray kept reliving the same 24 hours over and over. The electorate went to the polls 3 times in 22 months in a plethora of pivotal plebiscites that included a hung parliament in 2001 and pushed the electoral system into parts previously unknown.
In his piece, Mr. Maharaj lamented that the authorities of the day had not opted for a Proportional Representation (PR) electoral system upon indpendence. With PR, there is ‘a strong correlation between percentage of votes and percentage of seats’. The status quo of the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) system was left in place, and is still in place today. FPTP means victory to the party with the most seats, regardless of what percentage they won out of the total votes cast. FPTP is like a number of mini-elections in each constituency; if I win more mini-elections than you, but got less total votes I’m still the outright winner.
The article called for the creation of more constituencies by hewing out pieces of existing rural UNC-held constituencies where there were so many more voters than their urban PNM-dominated counterparts. Using a sample of 4 constituencies usually won by the PNM and 4 usually won by the UNC, Mr. Maharaj highlighted an interesting contrast: in the 4 PNM constituencies, the average electorate was 18,504, while the average in the UNC constituencies was 46% higher, at 27,081. The rationale for the choice of the 8 constituency escapes me, but it the numbers are intriguing.
As the table here shows, in 2020 the average was much more comparable between the 2 groups, with the 4 UNC constituencies having on average 13% more voters – 27,665 compared to 24,486 – than their traditionally PNM-held counterparts.
The median number of voters was 27,467 in Lopinot / Bon Air West. All 4 of the UNC constituencies highlighted in 2001 by Mr. Maharaj are right around the median figure. 3 of the 4 PNM examples are over 10% below the median figure.
That said however, the fact still remains that at the national level, the average numbes of voters in each constituency was 27,200 in 2020, so it is generally balanced. This point can then be countered by observing that while 2 of the 3 constituencies with the highest number of voters were PNM constituencies, the 3 with the lowest number of voters – Tobago East, San Fernando West and Port of Spain South- were also PNM. Make of that what you will.
The largest constituency, Couva North, had 7,637 more votes than the smallest, Tobago East. 5 UNC constituencies were among the 20 seats with less than the median number of voters, which isn’t that much when you think of it.
Finally, Mr. Maharaj bemoaned a ‘built-in advantage for the PNM in the East-West corridor’. I’m not sure how the decades of UNC victories in Barataria/San Juan and usual strong non-PNM slant in St Augustine fit in to that narrative.
Some say numbers don’t lie. Do the numbers here add up to a pretence? Alas, it seems like the numbers are saying whatever the listener wants to hear.
Politics868 