The proposals of the Constitution Reform Commission do not provide an escape route from the curse of party fanaticism allied to tribal loyalties and their fallout effects on the polity, society and economy. Neither do the proposals identify a workable mechanism for bringing greater scrutiny to the work of the Executive either inside or outside of the Parliament.
The major suggestion of the report to achieve "more scrutiny of public affairs and less dominance of a party line on all aspects of the functioning of the Parliament" is for the election of a Senate from which the prime minister and ministers will come. The election will be conducted using a form of Proportional Representation (PR) that requires that the government be constituted of the party that receives more than 50 per cent of the votes cast.
That will still leave the Prime Minister in total control of the government and his/her ministers; it will continue to be that one of the two major ethnic parties will be in charge to dispense patronage to loyal supporters and financiers, and that tribalism will still prevail.
Indeed, the Prime Minister and the oligarchy of whichever party rules are likely to have even greater control of the two Houses as both sets of MPs would depend on them for ministerial posts and funding for projects in their constituencies–the suggested creation of a constituency development fund is far too vague to be seriously considered.
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