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January 30, 2006

Palestine

Ken Ritchie, Chief Executive of the ERS, gets back from an election observation in Palestine tomorrow, but I've been reading a bit about the election in his absence. Fruits and Votes as always has a valuable discussion. I hadn't realised before quite how flawed the design of the system was. Half of the 132 seats are filled by a multi-member FPTP system (and 6 of those seats are reserved for members of the Christian community) and the other half by a national list vote. However, the list vote is not compensating, as it is in Scotland or Germany, but independent. This apparently technical difference has had consequences.

Hamas (standing in this election as 'Change and Reform' - sarcastic comment supplied on request) won a big victory in the constituencies, with 45 seats to 17 for Fatah and 4 Independents (and 5 Fatah and 1 Independent were in the Christian seats). This was on just under 41% of the constituency vote to 35.7% for Fatah. With the 29 list seats,based on 44.5% of the list vote, this produced an overall majority for Hamas on a minority vote.

Had the proportional allocation taken account of the constituency seats, the overall result would have been something like 58 for Hamas and 54 for Fatah, with 20 others. The electoral system manufactured a landslide for Hamas when a popular majority did not exist.

Fatah cannot complain too much, as it was a system designed for the convenience of the largest single party - which they expected to be themselves. And it will get a Prime Minister with 35% of the vote, and a President who elbowed his way to office in 2000 with fewer votes than his competitor, precisely nowhere to complain about the lack of mandate for Hamas. (The Israelis, for all the faults of their system have a better case...)

For more on Palestine see Fruits and Votes and the full election results from the Central Elections Commission of Palestine.

Posted by lewisbaston on January 30, 2006

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