IN A little noticed intervention in Parliament last week, Prime Minister Bruce Golding informed the House that the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ) will soon make recommendations on electoral boundaries in the island that will propose increasing the number of constituencies to 63. The plan, ultimately, is to cap the number of constituencies at 65. There are now 60 constituencies.

It is almost predetermined that Section 67 of the constitution will be appropriately amended to give effect to the commission's recommendation, for, as Mr Golding reminded, it is the convention for the legislature, effectively to rubber-stamp proposals from the ECJ. Essentially, Parliament's boundaries committee will adopt the electoral commission's report as its own.

We understand how the convention developed. The commission was launched when Jamaica's electoral process was deeply flawed and riven by violence. The solution was having the parties, with the support of independent members on the commission thrash out issues, with agreements having the legitimacy of consensus support.

Hung parliaments

Hung parliaments after elections earlier in the decade in Trinidad and Tobago helped to concentrate Jamaican minds on that issue. And this intensified after last year's close general election when, for a day or two after the vote, the outcome of the vote hung in the balance.

But these genuine concerns notwithstanding, we are not convinced that the proposed solution is the correct one. And neither do we see the evidence of a robust effort by any of the immediately relevant parties to convince Jamaicans that the route embarked on is the most efficacious and in their best interest.

First, the current stipulation of the constitution is that there should be a minimum of 45 constituencies and a maximum of 60. The main provisos, thereafter, are that constituencies should not cross parish boundaries and that the number of voters in a constituency should not exceed the electoral quota by 50 per cent, or be less than two-thirds of the quota. The electoral quota is simply a division of the number of names on the voters register by the number of constituencies, which, currently would give a number of around 24,000.

Informing the people

Perhaps two constituencies fall outside these stipulations. So, we suspect that there will be between the parties a civil and consensual gerrymandering to arrive at the additional constituencies, without affecting safe seats and garrisons and/or clear impact on long-term electoral fortunes.

If it is predetermined that Parliament will give its imprimatur to whatever proposal comes before it, it is incumbent on the ECJ to consult fully and openly with all stakeholders in the process, laying bare all the facts.

Not least of the information that people should be made aware of is that there is no inevitability to increasing the number of constituencies. The numbers can be reduced to 45 and anywhere between that and 60. Perhaps people might be told of the savings to the national coffers and the parties themselves, which shook down contributors for an estimated $1.5 billion to run last year's general election, if we were to go that route.

Moreover, if they march with this increase in constituencies, it must be on the understanding that there must not be any increase in that pork barrel which Mr Golding euphemistically calls the Constituency Development Fund to allow new members of parliament to wallow in the fat.

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