Whose seat is it, anyway?
SOME DAYS it seems like the Assembly’s a long-established part of Welsh public life. On others, you realise how young an institution it is. Today’s defection of Mohammad Asghar from Plaid to the Tories is the first time that any AM has “crossed the floor” (as opposed to merely losing their party’s whip as Rod Richards and Peter Law did). As such, and it raises some new and intriguing questions about who legitimately occupies the slot allocated to Asghar.
Unlike a constituency AM, whom the voters elect in person, list AMs are picked by party. If they leave the Assembly before the subsequent election, as Alun Michael, Rod Richards and Christine Humphreys did, they are replaced by the next available person on their party’s list. Plaid has lost an AM allocated to it on the South Wales East list – so why shouldn’t Colin Mann, the party’s third placed candidate in 2007 be rehearsing the oath right now? By allowing Asghar to retain his seat while defecting to another party, the purpose of the top-up list (to compensate for gross disproportionalities in the constituency section) is surely being subverted? No?
Then there is the question of whether someone elected on a ticket of breaking up the Union, but who is now defecting because he wants to preserve it instead is duty-bound to seek a fresh mandate. That opportunity does not, of course, exist on the list. Perhaps that raises a further problem with the system of election.
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The legal position is that the seat belongs to Oscar, not Plaid. The ethical position is a little more complex, and it is understandable that Plaid is pursuing this angle.
“By allowing Asghar to retain his seat while defecting to another party, the purpose of the top-up list (to compensate for gross disproportionalities in the constituency section) is surely being subverted?”
Possibly. But that is the law of the land. I don’t recall significant discussion on this point during the passage of the Government of Wales Act 2006. Indeed, political obsession then, in Plaid and in the other parties, was around the debarring of people standing on the list and for a constituency. Broader points on the legitimacy and representative nature of the regional lists did not enter the debate. Presumably any future legislation on the electoral system for the Assembly will reflect today’s events.
“Then there is the question of whether someone who got elected on a ticket of breaking up the Union and now wishes to defect because he wants to preserve it is duty-bound to seek a fresh mandate. That opportunity does not, of course, exist on the list.”
The most peculiar element about this whole Oscar business is how he can have held such views and been in Plaid. He has just reiterated his love of the monarchy and respect for the UK on the Wales Today lunchtime bulletin. Now either he has been completely disingenuous or Plaid’s selection procedure in South Wales East was deeply flawed. This is not just crossing from one party to another – it is the direct rejection of one political philosophy and the wholehearted embracing of another.
Either Oscar misled Plaid, or hid his politics, or Plaid did not ask the right questions before he was selected. In any of these scenarios, the Plaid selection and vetting procedure has been shown wanting.
What happens in other countries with PR systems? Anyone know?
You can perhaps just about justify it by saying that the party list thing works for the duration of the election, and that once elected all AMs are treated equally. That seems to be how the Act is set up.
Sadly I’m sure that the BNP in Newport will be absolutely delighted at today’s turn of events.
Jeremy, this is what I’ve gleaned from our stuff on this at the Electoral Reform Society.
Different countries with similar systems have different solutions to this problem.
In New Zealand between their first Additional Member System election in 1996 and that of 1999, 11 MPs left their parties (out of a 120 member parliament). This undermined the principle of proportionality that underpinned the system.
In 2001 the Labour Alliance passed an act which stated that the seat of any non-independent member who resigned from a political party for whom s/he had been elected would become vacant. A constituency MP would face an immediate by-election; the list seat would go to the next on the list.
The dangers with this law are that it means that freedom of conscience of individual MPs is compromised, which is an important safeguard to overly strong party leaderships who have more disciplinary powers over their elected members. In Germany, the original model for the Assembly system, this individual conscience is enshrined in law, and so there is no ‘anti-defection’ law. It can be argued that individual members serve the country at large and this trumps party loyalty. It has particular bearing on list MPs, who cannot defend their position in a by-election.
It could also be argued that such a law is unnecessary anyway. In New Zealand’s 1999 elections (before the ‘anti-defection’ law), every single one of the members who defected lost their seat.
The problem as I see it is the closed party list. Under the AMS system with an open list, voters could choose between candidates as well as parties – and this would give the candidates a personal mandate. Similarly, under STV, the candidates would have been chosen as individual candidates as well as party candidates. While, as Daran notes, there are certainly issues of selection here, under an open list or STV, voters can know if someone’s personal views diverge from party policy on some issues, and vote for their preference accordingly.