THINK TANK: NEW IDEAS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
Let The People Choose Candidates
Hugh Treacy
It’s a moot point how much of our present fiscal catastrophe is down to bankers, developers, or cocaine-addled New York investment brokers. However, one thing is clear, the present occupants of the Dáil have failed spectacularly in their primary role of holding the government to account for its actions, and are now generally seen to be inadequate in the performance of their duties as national legislators.
So why is it that our parliamentarians seem to be plumbing the depths of mediocrity? Why are our TDs no better than lobby fodder, when they should be leading national debates and keeping a close eye on the government? Perhaps it has something to do with our unusual form of democracy – proportional representation by the single transferable vote (PR-STV), which, by insisting on multi-seat constituencies, encourages auction politics and intra-party rivalry, at the same time discouraging TDs from concentrating on legislative duties in favour of ‘minding’ their constituencies.
No doubt PR-STV has its flaws. But if we want to encourage a better class of candidate for high office, we need to look at the present system of candidate selection.
In Irish elections, most candidates are chosen behind closed doors, by a tiny, self-interested elite of party officials and hardcore members. These are often parochial cliques, or worse, interview panels of staffers from party HQ (used by Fianna Fail in the last election). The criteria they use in the candidate selection process is opaque at best, but the high percentage of current TDs who are related to previous TDs, shows the nepotism principle is alive and well in the choice of candidates. Needless to say, talented, independent ‘outsiders’ need not apply.
A possible answer to this ‘graveyard of talent’ is the adoption of a system that has been operating successfully in the United States for decades. This is the ‘nominating primary’, which worked so well in overturning the ‘dead cert’ nomination of Hillary Clinton as the Democrat candidate for president and instead ensured the grassroots favourite, Barack Obama, was his party’s, and later the country’s, choice.
There are many variations of primary elections, but the most familiar are the ‘open’ and ‘closed’ versions. In a closed primary, voters designate themselves as the supporters of a particular party in order to vote on a list of candidates. This protects the party from attempts by political opponents to vote for the weakest candidate – a possible drawback to the ‘open’ primary, where all registered voters can participate in the choice of candidate. The main advantage of the open primary is the engagement of the largest possible number of voters in the process, prior to the actual election.
On August 4th, Dr. Sarah Wollaston was chosen by open primary as the Conservative candidate for Totnes, Devon, for the next general election, the first time a nominating primary has been used in the UK. It was all the more interesting as the current MP, Anthony Steen, had decided to step down in the wake of the British MPs expenses scandal. The Conservatives had hoped the electoral innovation would re-engage the public in the political process in the face of widespread disgust with politicians, and in this they seem to have been successful.
The British ‘first-past-the-post’ system had seemed to be cast in stone. But the fundamental shock of the Westminster expenses scandal has left everything open to question. Now, even senior Government politicians like David Lammy and Foreign Secretary, David Miliband are openly supportive of primaries as the best way of re-building the trust between a sceptical public and political parties, with Miliband describing traditional party systems as ‘dying’. They also see the advantage of the transparency that primaries bring to the deeply discredited parliamentary establishment, which, after losing the Speaker of the House of Commons as part of its post-scandal clear-out, needs all the help it can get.
With public trust in Irish politicians, and even the parliamentary system, being at an all-time low, perhaps there has never been a better time to install pure democracy at every level of the political system, and in the process take the fate of many talented would-be politicians out of the hands of the old guard and into the care of the people, who, after all, they are meant to be representing. With the upcoming review of the Programme for Government, there is now an opportunity for nominating primaries to be part of an overall constitutional reform package, so that it will no longer be the case that the first the voters see of a candidate at an election is their face on a lamp-post.
Hugh Treacy has worked as a parliamentary reporter in Leinster House and a parliamentary assistant to a TD and MEP.
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