Aware of
the constitutional and methodological inconsistencies of the previous electoral
rule, Congress approved a reform of the Electoral Law in March of 2000 to
introduce "vote pooling". In this modified version, each party pools
votes obtained by individual candidates and the total sum of votes obtained
will be used to distribute seats according to a D'Hondt formula of proportional
representation. Party leaders in turn distribute allocated seats to the most
voted candidates within each party. The revised version of the electoral formula
will be first applied at the national level in the 2002 general elections.
Finally, the election of National deputies was also eliminated for the 2002
election, leaving Congress with provincial representations only.
Despite
extreme and frequent experimentation with its electoral framework, Ecuador
has not been able to promote an effective combination of representative
politicians with effective government. Over time, there has been a permanent
government effort to manipulate the electoral system to reduce party system
fragmentation and encourage the formation of pre electoral alliances that could
eventually lend support to government-led initiatives in the legislature. The
adoption of a two round system of presidential election and its modified
threshold or the overrepresenting of larger parties through a modified PR
formula were meant to give both legitimacy as well as ample party support for
presidential candidates when taking office. Opposed to the logic of
"majority building", different social and ethnic groups, as well as
entrepreneurial politicians claimed that the electoral system privileged party
interests over citizens' demands and sought to relax electoral restrictions to
political participation and promoted the candidacies of "independent"
politicians. In turn, the proliferation of independent candidates in the mid
and late 90's made coalition formation in Congress unpredictable.
The
constitutional battle over the requisites to maintain party registry well
illustrates the tension between governability and representation. The 1979 Law
of Political Parties established that parties that did not obtain 5% of
effective votes in two consecutive elections would lose their electoral
registry. This prohibition was declared unconstitutional in 1983, reinstated in
1994 as 4%, abolished in 1996 and reinstated in 1998 as 5% again. While the
advocates of governability argued that smaller parties contributed to
legislative fragmentation and unpredictable coalition building in Congress,
defenders of representation argued that Ecuadorian minorities deserved to be
represented by those parties. In the meantime, small and usually personalistic
parties were able to survive for several years.
Ecuador has not found a power sharing
formula to promote democratic governance. One open issue for debate is the
adoption of a mixed-member system for the legislature. In principle, this could
reconcile the need for direct provincial representation of the heterogeneous
Ecuadorian population with the election of nationally oriented politicians.
Another issue is the introduction of some parliamentary features like cabinet
sharing would make potential coalition partners (parties) more accountable to
their electorate and responsible to the government. In any case, an effective
electoral system would need to mature over time (without being subject to
sudden changes) and would have to take into consideration other political
institutions and historical traditions of the country.
