No secrets in a democracy
MPs can vote according to their consciences – but a secret vote in Parliament is a violation of citizens’ right to know if public representatives are serving them, writes Steven Friedman
THE OPPOSITION’S motion of no confidence in President Jacob Zuma will almost certainly not unseat him, but it has triggered important debates on the rights and duties of MPs. They may influence how democracy works long after the battle over Zuma is over.
First, it has revived the odd idea that public representatives should be allowed to vote in secret. The Constitutional Court will decide whether this is legal – what is clear is that it is not democratic.
Citizens are entitled to a secret vote because we do not represent anyone and so it is no one else’s business how we vote. A secret vote ensures that people can use the polling booth to say what they want, free from pressure.
But MPs are in Parliament because citizens voted for them. They are accountable to voters, who have a right to know what they do in their name. In some democracies, tracking how representatives vote is an important service to voters – it may decide how they vote.
A secret ballot in Parliament is a violation of citizens’ right to know if public representatives are serving them. The constitution should not allow a president to be elected by secret ballot – the fact that it does should not be used to give MPs another opportunity to cheat on voters.
A more complicated issue was raised in an article by former president Thabo Mbeki, who argued that MPs should place their duty to citizens ahead of their loyalty to their parties.
While he said this applied to members of all parties, the implication was that if ANC members felt that the public wanted them to support a no-confidence vote, they should do this, whatever the ANC thinks.
Mbeki’s view has been quoted enthusiastically by the secret-ballot lobby, but it strengthens the argument against secrecy: MPs cannot be accountable to the people unless the public knows how they are voting.
His point expresses a core democratic principle – that democracy is meant to be a system in which the people govern, not in which parties rule. The ideal democracy would be one in which all decisions were voted on directly by the people. Because that is not possible, citizens elect representatives. In principle, their duty is to express what voters want.
Precisely because we use party lists, support for a party does not necessarily mean backing for any particular representative, including its leader. Mbeki’s critics say this does not apply if the constitution requires us to vote for parties, not people.
National and provincial representatives, they argue, owe their presence in Parliament to their party, so they must obey it if they want to remain a representative.
They are certain to be cheered on by party activists who complain, particularly when their party is in government, that its leaders ignore what party structures want. When he was president, Mbeki was often accused of not doing what the ANC wanted him to do.
But what parties want is not necessarily what the people who vote for them want. In any democracy, including our own, the people who join parties are a small fraction of those who vote for them. What the party thinks may be totally at odds with what most people who vote for it want.
Few voters support a party because they agree with everything it says in an election campaign – most back the party to which they feel closest, even if they disagree with it on some issues.
Many decisions taken by parties react to events that were not expected during the election, and so voting for the party does not signal agreement.
Given this, people who voted for a party may disagree with any particular decision it takes: MPs who buck the party line may be more in touch with their party’s supporters than those who lay down that line. If this applies to policies, it applies even more to a no-confidence vote.
Leaders’ faces may appear on ballot papers, but the vote endorses the party, not the leader. Attitudes to a president or minister also often change once they are in office. So, there is no way a party’s decision that a leader should stay should be assumed to be what its voters want. If MPs believe it is not what they want, their duty is to support a no-confidence vote.
In this case, all of this is probably academic: unless a plot is being hatched somewhere, ANC MPs will not support the no-confidence vote. But a democracy that recognises that MPs have no right to vote in secret and have a duty to do what they think voters want, even if that is not what their parties want, is in far better shape than one that ignores these principles.