|
Wednesday, October 24, 2007, #203 (1470)
President Mikheil Saakashvili proposed a package of electoral reforms last week, including lowering the vote threshold needed to win parliamentary representation from seven percent to five percent. His party stands to benefit. The constitution originally pegged the vote threshold at five percent, but amendments in 1999 raised the bar by two points. The vote threshold was an issue after the 2003 Rose Revolution, when both the political opposition and the Council of Europe urged the government to bring the barrier back down to five percent. The Saakashvili administration did not find it necessary at the time. It is needed now, according to the government, to encourage a healthier opposition to develop. “[The change would] allow more flexibility for new groups or splinter groups within to reemerge and push the opposition to higher grounds with regards to democratic culture,” majority MP Giga Bokeria told this newspaper two days after Saakashvili announced the proposals. This and the other changes, including permanently holding presidential and parliamentary elections together, will take constitutional amendments—something which will be of little practical difficulty for Saakashvili’s rubber stamp parliament. The president says that sort of control over parliament is not something he wants. Along with lowering the vote threshold, he is also offering to strip away his power to dissolve the legislative body. It is a clever move. The president managed to both burnish his international image as a democratic reformer and knock the current opposition. The lowered threshold will hopefully, he said, allow opposition groups more credible and constructive than the current lot to gain a foothold in parliament. Many voters seemed to agree, somewhat deflating the opposition’s current barnstorming. The opposition, meanwhile, were less than impressed. Republican leader Tina Khidasheli mocked the proposal, saying it was necessary for the ruling party itself to clear the vote threshold in next year’s elections. Opposition leaders also decried scheduling the presidential and parliamentary votes together. The country now needs fair elections, not tinkering with old numbers, opposition leaders say. “We used to demand this in 2004 when the Council of Europe delegation demanded the barrier to be reduced to five percent. Now we face a different reality in Georgia… As it stands now, the united opposition is going to win the parliamentary elections. We need fair elections to be held,” said Conservative MP Kakha Kukava, according to the newspaper Akhali Taoba. Lowering the threshold could undermine the opposition’s election campaign. Most observers agree the already fractious opposition parties need to run as a united bloc to make any headway in parliament. They now have less incentive to do so: parties previously falling short of the seven percent threshold suddenly find themselves within striking distance of their very own parliament seats, without needing any pesky alliances with other struggling opposition parties. The electoral reforms are arguably good for democracy, but they are better for this government. |
A lower vote threshold may be good for democracy, but is bad news for the opposition