Reducing barriers to citizen participation

Once again, apologies for the extreme dearth of activity since June. To start off, a long overdue complement to a previous post.

It is quite obvious that a significant majority of the population has simply washed their hands off the fate of this country.

This post proposes four measures that the government could do to reverse this:

1. A independent organisation to analyse proposed policies
2. Reducing the power of political parties
3. An online platform for voters to propose legislation.
4. Increasing the availability of referendums.

To me, the main reason why people simply don’t care about politics is because of a lack of information and the fact that existing channels to convey their will are inadequate, thus naturally leading to the above proposals. Though there is no chance of this being implemented in the near future, we will need concrete ideas on how to reform the system, and I hope this is a useful starting point.

A independent organisation to analyse proposed policies

A long unresolved question is whether the Opposition’s fiscal policies are “ticking time bombs” that will bankrupt the nation. An independent agency dedicated to forecasting the fiscal impact of proposed policies (following the lines of the American Congressional Budget Office) would settle this issue.

Information is power. Without it, there is no way for an informed electorate to ever arise. This would partially resolve the information deficit in today’s politics and allow voters to objectively evaluate the practicality of a proposal.

In addition, this would encourage politicians to ensure that their policies actually work, rather than unserious soundbites meant to gain votes.

Reducing the power of political parties

By controlling their chances of promotion and assistance in campaigns, I have significant concerns that parties (and party whips in particular) are exerting an inordinate amount of influence on how MPs vote compared to grassroot views.

Short of outlawing parties (which would be wildly impractical), limiting the critical role of parties in political campaigns would be useful, hopefully allowing MPs to vote according to their own conscience rather than blindly toeing the party line.

For instance, reducing the amount that can be spent on each voter by each candidate and severely restricting political donations would level the playing field, making contests more competitive and based more on the competency of candidates rather than the resources of competing parties.

An online platform for voters to propose legislation

The responsibility of voters should not end after an election. It is important that the electorate remains vigilant against unsound policies.

An online portal for voters to actively track the progress of legislation and parliamentary debates, as well as propose bills/amendments, would be helpful in this regard.

Under this plan, only registered voters would be able to log on into this portal and freely propose bills and vote on the viability of this bills. Upon exceeding a certain threshold, sufficiently popular proposals would automatically be brought onto the floor of Parliament to be debated. Alternatively, MPs could call up any of these proposals if they deem them to have merit.

To emphasize, the final decision to pass bills still lies in the hands of Parliament.

Increasing the availability of referendums

Currently, referendums are limited to the occasion where constitutional amendments are passed by Parliament but vetoed by the President, an exceedingly rare occurence that has in fact never happened in the 45 years since our Republic broke off from Malaysia. Broadening their scope would be a useful step forward to turn the referendum from a theoretical process into one with actual teeth. For a start, allowing voters to also propose constitutional amendments through referendum, rather than leaving Parliament with the sole right of amending the Constitution, would be a start. In this scenario, a referendum would be called if a significant fraction of the electoral signs and submits a petition at the Electoral Commission within 3 months.