The Bahamas has a bicameral (two chamber) Parliament.\u00a0 The House of Assembly\u2019s members are elected and the members of the Senate are appointed.<\/p>\n
Maurice Tynes, the clerk of Parliament, recently appeared before the Constitutional Commission and recommended a new electoral system be adopted in The Bahamas to better reflect the will of the people.<\/p>\n
More specifically, Tynes suggested the Senate be abolished and the Parliament be unicameral (a single chamber).\u00a0 The chamber would be comprised of elected and appointed members.\u00a0 The appointed members would be selected based on the percentage of votes the political party they represent received.\u00a0 A party would be required to gain at least five percent of the vote before it could be considered to participate in the sharing of parliamentary seats, Tynes argued.<\/p>\n
Such a system would open up our democratic process to voices beyond the two dominant parties who currently occupy all of the political space in The Bahamas.\u00a0 In the last general election, the Democratic National Alliance (DNA) received nearly 10 percent of the vote.\u00a0 Yet, all those Bahamians who voted for the DNA have no voice in Parliament.<\/p>\n
In that same election the Progressive Liberal Party secured 48.7 percent of the vote and won 29 (76 percent) of the seats in the House.\u00a0 The Free National Movement captured 42.1 percent of the vote and only won nine (24 percent) of the 38 seats.<\/p>\n
The PLP\u2019s super-majority in the House is a distortion of the will of the people.\u00a0 Consequently, it can force through laws without consultation with a majority it truly does not deserve.\u00a0 Our constitution is archaic in this regard, noted the clerk.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis first past the post, or winner take all, voting system is indeed a simple and fast way to vote and to count ballots, but the first past the post system produces too many distortions in the result of the balloting and most often the result does not accurately reflect the will of the people,\u201d said Tynes.<\/p>\n
It is unlikely that this generation of politicians will change our electoral system.\u00a0 There are few revolutionary thinkers in that bunch.\u00a0 Younger Bahamians, however, should examine the various voting models that exist around the world and seek, in their time, to create a voting system that allows more voices to be recognized in Parliament.<\/p>\n
We all have seen that the two main political organizations have become bloated and exhausted patronage parties.\u00a0 New voices need to be given a chance to bring forward new ideas and modes of operation in order to help reinvigorate The Bahamas.<\/p>\n
Editorial from The Nassau Guardian<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We all have seen that the two main political organizations have become bloated and exhausted patronage parties. New voices need to be given a chance to bring forward new ideas and modes of operation in order to help reinvigorate The Bahamas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[74,40,60,168,163],"class_list":["post-34980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions","tag-fnm","tag-government","tag-plp","tag-politics-2","tag-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}