We aren’t going to get a වියත් parliament.

Sri Lankans (at least on Social Media) are calling for a Augean Stable-esque clean-up of the Parliament — but it isn’t going to happen. At least, not in 2020.

Why? Proportional Representation. Under PR, not only do parties compete to win seats in a district, the nominees within a party compete to win preferences.

Assuming the SLPP polls the same percentages in each district for the General Election that Gotabaya Rajapaksa did in the Presidential, here’s how many seats they’d win:

Even if the SLPP nominates 50% “good, clean, educated, intelligent” candidates, it will be the balance 50% who will rake in most of the preference votes — while voters are theoretically free to vote for any party and give their preference for any of the nominees, in practice, they will mostly end up voting for the same-old “career politicians” (some of whom are technically වියත් but in practice are not much better than the rest), because of their

• human capital (people to organise rallies and pocket meetings, design and run ads, visit homes, and most importantly the experience of managing a campaign), and
• ill-gotten money (the legal renumeration of being an MP simply can’t pay for the cost of getting elected)
• “track record” of service and achievements (both legitimate and corrupt)

Even in the above optimistic 50%-50% scenario, only ~25 of the ~110 SLPP MPs elected at District level would be වියත්. For the other parties, the scenario will be even worse. And that’s just not enough to make a difference in the next parliament.

Under the Westminster system, or the hybrid model that we used for Local Government elections, the above-mentioned barriers still exist — but their impact is much less because the candidate only has to canvass a smaller area and population, and doesn’t have to fight for preferences with candidates from his own party.

Unfortunately, under PR, parties really can’t afford to not nominate these popular politicians — they’d risk losing the election altogether (especially if the scorned crossed over).

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, riding a wave of post-election popularity and with the backing of වියත්මග, might have just about pulled it off — but by rewarding popular loyalists with positions in his interim Cabinet, he’s signalled that that’s not the way he’s going to play this game… and the ones who justify his decision on the grounds of “he has to play with the hand dealt to him in 2015” will soon be saying “well, the people dealt him the same hand again.”

You may also be interested in my other writing on Education, Politics/Power, Ethics/Philosophy/Humanism, Parenting and “Lost in Translation”