Hon Chairperson, the Electoral Amendment Bill is a Private Member's Bill sponsored by the hon James Selfe. It was tabled and referred to the portfolio committee on 27 March. The Bill seeks to change our electoral system, make provision for constituencies and allow South Africans who are absent from their voting districts on voting day, whether in another province or abroad, to vote in the national election as well as in the election for their provinces.
The Bill makes provision for a National Assembly of 400 members constituted as follows: a total of 100 members elected proportionally, according to the national proportional support of parties; and 300 members elected in 100 constituencies, which means that each constituency would have three Members of Parliament. These 300 constituency MPs are elected according to a proportional representation system.
After allowing the hon Selfe to address us and after deliberating on the Bill, the committee adopted a motion that the legislation is not desirable at present. Amazingly, the hon Selfe's own party the DA - and I can hear some of you saying that it's an excellent idea - also supported this motion on the undesirability of the Bill.
Only the hon McIntosh, presumably acting with a mandate from Cope, supported the Bill. Ironically, if the Bill had become legislation, it would most probably have erased Cope from the political map. [Laughter.]
The Bill was not supported due to the following considerations. The proposed changes to the electoral system, to include both the constituency and proportional representation list system, might very well dilute the constitutional principle of a multiparty democracy.
It does appear that these changes to the system will be to the extreme detriment of smaller parties such as Cope, and will result in a two-party or three-party system instead of the current multiparty system that we have. The net results of the Bill would be an increased threshold resulting in the exclusion of more political parties and a system that is less proportionate to the votes received by each party than what is presently the case.
We interrogated the matter and these were the conclusions that the committee came to.
The introduction of a constituency-based proportional representation list system will also result in a more complicated electoral system - something we do not want in this country.
Why not?
Whilst aimed at greater accountability, it is questionable as to what extent the proportional representation list at constituency level will achieve this. The voter will still vote for a party, but not the candidate. Each party will have a list of more than one candidate and this may confuse voters as to whom they are voting for. On his own admission, the member who sponsored the Bill, the hon Selfe, indicated that the adoption of the Bill would amount to trade-offs such as greater accountability to an extent, on the one hand, as opposed to smaller parties being negatively affected, on the other. The hon Selfe admitted that there would be gains as well as losses. We considered the losses to be too many.
As far as the part of the Bill dealing with absent and special voters is concerned, the committee is of the following opinion. The Electoral Amendment Bill, Bill 22 of 2013, has been submitted to the Speaker by the Minister of Home Affairs in terms of Joint Rule 159 and referred to the committee. This Bill has been properly researched by the electoral commission and deals with similar matters to those in this part of the Private Members Bill.
The committee therefore prefers to deal with these matters when it deals with the Bill, which is now before the committee. The committee thanks the hon Selfe for sponsoring this Bill and in so doing giving the committee the opportunity to engage in a continuous debate on the most appropriate electoral system for our country.
This is certainly a matter that will receive the ongoing attention of both the committee and the Electoral Commission. I thank you. [Applause.] There was no debate.
Mr Chairperson, I move:
That the Report be adopted.
Declarations of vote:
Hon Chairperson, I think that the hon Gaum has lived up to the popular perception of politicians being fairly slippery. His attempt to present himself as a champion of tiny, minority parties as an excuse to find some righteousness in shooting down this Bill is very unconvincing.
It was quite clear from the beginning that the ANC wanted nothing to do with this Bill. They also recognised that the public, and fairness in the political system, demanded that they actually agree with the Bill.
So what did they do? They found some weak excuses, and suddenly they found the FF Plus, Azapo and the PAC so important that they used them as an excuse to oppose this Bill, but in fact ...
Speak to the Bill!
... to be fair to the committee, everybody recognised that this Bill, which the hon Selfe had proposed - and the House notes his absence as we consider this report ... [Interjections.]
Of course, the shadow minister of home affairs, the hon De Freitas, also did not support the Bill, so I don't know where the poor public think matters of principle are.
At least Cope said that we would support this Bill and proposal, and I believe that it is unfortunate that it is not debated. The only ray of hope is that everybody in the committee agreed that it was a good Bill, but we had another constraint.
I think everybody in this House knows that there is an election in April or May next year - and, by the way, we hear that it is on 15 May - and we obviously wanted to get the law in place to deal with the election. If we had dealt with hon Selfe's Private Member's Bill, we would have had to delay that. I just wanted to mention that for the record.
Hon Chair, let me first of all clarify that we did support the Bill, but as a committee we agreed and felt it would not be practical and realistic now to discuss the components pertaining to constituencies and the whole system that it encompasses for the 2014 election. On that aspect we agree that we will bring a Private Member's Bill to the House after the next elections. All other aspects with regard to voting, voting in other provinces, voting abroad and so forth are incorporated in the Independent Electoral Commission Bill. That is the reason why this change happened. There was no rejection of any Bill.
The report states that the proposals contained in hon James Selfe's Private Member's Bill might very well dilute the constitutional principle of multiparty democracy. It also says that it's detrimental to smaller parties. Yet the report does not explain why this is the case and how these conclusions were reached, because the Bill explains exactly the opposite.
In addition, the report states that the Bill would result in a system that is less proportional to the votes received by each party than is currently the case. In fact, the Bill ensures that this balance is maintained while introducing added accountability to voters.
It is something that the ANC does not like and they are really fearful of introducing such a Bill as it would ensure that their MPs have to be accountable. The report again fails to substantiate this erroneous statement.
The report also ignores the fact that the current system we have in local government allow voters to indeed vote for ward candidates. The report implies that it cannot be done at national level for the National Assembly, stating that a constituency system would confuse voters, as was mentioned in the report and by the hon Gaum.
This is simply insulting to the voters as similar systems exist worldwide and those voters understand them perfectly well. Why wouldn't South Africans? That is why we are saying that we dealt with the two Bills in a separate way. These are the aspects of how we approached the matter. We will be dealing with aspects of voting in other provinces and abroad in terms of the present IEC Bill.
Thank you very much. [Applause.]
Chair, in rebuttal, yes, the ANC is a champion of the principle of multiparty democracy, hon McIntosh, and therefore it is also a champion of the rights of smaller political parties, such as Cope, to be in this House.
If you check the polls you might see that Cope will not be the second or third biggest party in this House after the elections, and this will amount to a two-party or three-party system. That is the idea of the hon Selfe ... [Interjections.] Maybe from his perspective and that of the DA ... [Interjections.]
Order, order, please!
... it might be quite a good idea, because it will catapult the DA into the number two position, and smaller political parties will ... [Interjections.] ... clearly not be where they are today.
As a result of this Bill, we would have had the situation where we would have had to say goodbye to the ACDP, and most probably also to Cope, the IFP and some other of the larger political parties. [Interjections.]
That is in essence what the consequences of the hon Selfe's Bill would have been. I really cannot understand that even today the hon McIntosh cannot see this point. [Interjections.]
The fact is that a party with 1% of the vote would, under the present system, get about four seats in this House because it competes with the other parties for the full 400 seats of the National Assembly.
According to the system proposed by the hon Selfe, that party would have contested only the 100 peer proportional seats. In the constituencies it would not have received enough votes to get a seat. Therefore, that same party, with 1% of the vote would only have one Member of Parliament under the DA's proposal. That is the reality and the truth. Let us look at the facts when we debate these matters. Thank you. [Applause.] [Interjections.]
Motion agreed to (Democratic Alliance dissenting).
Report accordingly adopted.