The present proportional representation system has some virtues, the most important being that the number of seats won reflect an exact percentage of the total votes cast for a particular party. In the first-past-the-post constituency system it often happened that a party could win a majority of seats while polling less votes than the losing parties.

On the other hand the constituency system had some strengths. The masses knew who they were voting for, even if the candidate had been chosen for that constituency by a political party. The elected representative in turn was expected to look after the interests and problems of that part of the country which he/she represented. Voters could make their concerns known to their representative. It is these central aspects of representation which are lacking in the pure P.R. system. The efforts of parties to assign informally a particular parliamentarian to a specific region have just not worked.

It is in recognition of such benefits of the constituency system that the Guyana Constitution even before reform had provided that Parliament could introduce a mixed system by dividing Guyana into constituencies while maintaining overall proportionality on the allocation of seats.

It was perhaps for that reason that the Constitutional Reform Committee decided that the electoral system should include an element of geographical representation. The National Democratic Institute which had strongly supported in so many ways the reform process provided an expert on electoral systems who, in view of the short time available (which precluded the demarcation of boundaries of new constituencies) recommended that as an interim step, the ten existing regions should be treated as geographical constituencies. This recommendation, after much inter-party negotiation, came out as the mixed electoral system utilised at the election in March. Under this system twenty-five parliamentarians were chosen from the regional lists submitted by parties. Each party accordingly won seats from the number allocated to each region and in keeping with the percentage of votes which the party had polled in that region. The remainder of seats numbering forty in all were allocated to parties on the basis of national or topping-up lists in proportion to the total percentage of votes polled in the entire country.

Of the twenty-five so to speak regional parliamentarians four have been appointed ministers. What will the other twenty-one parliamentarians do in keeping with their regional status? Is this thrust towards geographical representation to remain no more than tokenism?

Each region has distinctive characteristics and problems. There are differences in population size, geographical characteristics, resources, ways of making a living, and the availability of social and economic infrastructure. Just think of the differences between the Corentyne, the Linden area and the South savannahs.

Clearly the objective of geographical representation must go further than just providing in parliament a regional perspective on the issues brought before parliament. Surely the objective must be to do more to bring directly the problems and development potential of each region into the affairs and transactions of parliament. This might well have helped, for example, with some of the protests and other problems that have arisen since the last elections. How can this be done? This should be a matter for priority consideration by the Committee on the management of parliamentary affairs.

Proposals which they might consider for making regional representation operational could include making adequate financial provision to enable each regional representative to travel into his or her region. There would also be an obvious advantage in enabling each party, as appropriate, to establish a regional constituency office.

There might be in parliament at regular intervals Regional question times. On a larger scale, regional matters might be brought before parliament by way of petition. The petition is a mechanism which was often used in the then Legislative Council in earlier times. However, the existing Rules of Procedure of Parliament currently provide that any member can present a petition to the Assembly.

All this would make for a lively if not turbulent parliament. All to the good. In a parliamentary democracy the place for the resolution of conflicts is within parliament, not through direct action in the streets or at the barricades.

Those who hanker after a staid and placid parliament are hankering after the colonial days when the Legislative Council (Legco) was little more than a rubber stamp - that is until a young man fresh out of University Dental School unexpectedly won the lower east coast seat and brought into Legco the concerns of the sugar plantation and the wharf. Legco was not to be the same thereafter.