Secret Vs Open Ballotby Michael Jegede – TheNigerialawyer

Soon after the 2019 presidential/National
Assembly elections, the battle for the seats of presiding officers
for the ninth Assembly began in earnest, with elected lawmakers on
the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC),
interested in one position or the other, publicly making their
intentions known.

The APC had overwhelming victory in the
elections. President Muhammadu Buhari secured a second term and the
party won majority of the legislative seats, paving the way for it
to produce the presiding officers in both chambers of the 9th NASS
to be inaugurated in June.

While the aspirants for the NASS topmost
positions were busy with consultations in the pursuit of their
ambitions, APC national chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, came
out with a bombshell. He announced that the governing party had
endorsed the Senate Leader, Senator Ahmad Lawan from Yobe State in
the Northeast, and House Leader, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila from Lagos
State in the Southwest, as the next Senate President and House of
Representatives Speaker respectively.

There were threats from some APC leaders
that anyone who refused to abide by the so-called party decision
would be disciplined. Nevertheless, former Senate Leader, Senator
Ali Ndume, a top contender for the Senate Presidency, unshakably
intensified his campaign. And he seems to be making serious waves
and gathering enough momentum in his push. Senator Danjuma Goje is
equally assumed to be in the Senate Presidency contest, but he
doesn’t appear to be as dogged as the ex-Senate Leader.

Ndume and Goje are respectively from the
states of Borno and Gombe located in the Northeastern region, where
the Senate Presidency was zoned to by the APC. Hon. Umar Bago
(Niger) and Hon. John Dyegh (Benue) from the North Central, have
likewise, not surrendered in the House Speakership tussle. They are
incensed by the “unfair decision” of APC to zone House speakership
to the Southwest which already has the Vice President.

With the insistence of these eminently
qualified lawmakers to remain in the race, those who want to impose
leaders on the ninth NASS, are reportedly scheming for the use of
open ballot for the leadership election. Even when the open ballot
system, is evidently against the standing rules of procedure for
both the Senate and House of Reps, which prescribes secret ballot
for the election of presiding officers.

The National Assembly management, headed by
Mohammed Sani-Omolori, was reported to be under pressure to ignore
the standing rules and conduct the election using the open ballot
system. Sani-Omolori was said to have been invited as the Clerk of
National Assembly, by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission,
EFCC, to answer questions relating to records of finances of the
Assembly, and the mode of voting to be used for the election of
leaders of the 9th NASS.

The APC after its purported endorsement of
Lawan and Gbajabiamila, has continued to maintain that the open
ballot method must be used, in the election for the ninth NASS
leadership. The party’s spokesman, Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, was for
instance, quoted as saying that “Secret ballot is not known to any
sanitary democratic practice. It is only people with hidden agenda
that look for secret ballot anywhere.” Some Civil Society
Organisations (CSOs) ignorantly joined the fray to clamour for the
adoption of open ballot voting for the election of the 9th NASS
leaders.

As the D-day for the NASS leadership
election draws nearer, should the voting system be a subject of
debate, when the current Senate and House Standing Orders clearly
specify that voting shall be by secret ballot? Why would anybody
want the NASS management to do otherwise? Is it a way of ensuring
that lawmakers-elect who vote against the supposed anointed
candidates are identified and marked for punishment?

Majority of the lawmakers-elects from the
APC and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are favourably disposed to
the secret voting method.  A Senator-elect, Orji Uzor
Kalu, had disclosed that all the elected legislators, were
unanimous in their support for the secret ballot pattern of voting,
at the induction programme held for them recently. The former Abia
State Governor, elected on the platform APC, to represent Abia
North in the ninth Senate was reported to have said: “All of us
(lawmakers-elect) have agreed during the induction programme that
we would use open-secret method and we have asked the National
Assembly management to provide ballot boxes and cubicles for that
purpose.”

Another ex-governor from Kano State, Senator
Kabiru Gaya of APC, elected for the fourth time by the people of
Kano South, also insisted that the Senate standing rule which
stipulates secret balloting shall be applied in the election of
presiding officers for the next NASS session.

Stressing that the 2015 Senate Rule remains
the valid document for use in the election of presiding officers
for the Red Chamber, Gaya who has declared his intention to contest
for the Deputy Senate President, asked: “Between 2011 Rule and 2015
Rule, which one comes last?” He said: “The second one supersedes
the first one. I am a member of the National Assembly. And we were
able to do these rules together.”

Proponents of the open ballot system have
argued that it is the global standard for the election of presiding
officers in the parliaments. This assertion is patently fallacious
and misleading! It is not based on empirical facts, but a mere
theoretical postulation by the open ballot advocates. Contrary to
their claim, today, secret balloting is the commonly used method
for parliamentary leadership election across the world. Apart from
the United States, Isreal, Argentina, India, New Zealand, Denmark
and some few others, the National Parliaments of most countries
make use of secret ballot in choosing presiding officers as
contained in their respective rules of procedure.

Even in the national parliaments of most
parliamentary democracies – like the United Kingdom (UK), Canada,
China, Australia, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Finland,
Singapore, Pakistan and a host of others – where party discipline
and control over elected representatives appear to be very strong,
the secret ballot system have become the common rule for the
election of presiding officers. The secret ballot style of voting
confers freedom on the parliamentarians to vote according to their
conscience, without being compelled to toe party line for fear of
intimidation and victimization.

In the Canadian House of Commons, until
1985, when election by secret ballot was finally enshrined in its
Standing Orders, Speakers were chosen openly by way a motion, more
often than not, initiated by the Prime Minister who is the Head of
Government. Only anointed candidate of the government based on
political connection could emerge as a Speaker at that time. Secret
ballot voting procedure was recommended by successive reform
committees on the principle that “the Speaker belongs to the House,
not to the Government or the Opposition.”

Following the amendment to the Standing
Orders, the first speakership election by secret ballot voting
system in the Canadian House of Commons was held in 1986.
Thirty-nine candidates slugged it out and Rt. Hon. John Allen
Fraser, a progressive conservative, after 11 rounds of secret
voting, emerged victorious as the first Speaker to be directly
elected by the honourable members. There was no room for imposition
anymore!

Also in the British House of Commons, up
until 2001, when it adopted the current system of secret ballot,
Speakers had been elected openly through the conventional
parliamentary motions and divisions. The election of a Speaker by
the process of secret vote was held in 2009 for the first time in
the parliament’s 700-year history, after the resignation of late
Rt. Hon. Lord Michael Martin. The incumbent Speaker, Rt. Hon. John
Bercow, then a conservative, elected into the Parliament in 1997,
defeated nine other candidates, including Sir George Young, after a
three-round secret ballot. Young, elected into the parliament in
1974, was believed to be the favoured candidate of the Tory
leadership, yet Bercow about the youngest in age and parliamentary
experience, won the contest via secret vote with the support of his
fellow parliamentarians.

Information available in
the PARLINE Database of the Inter-Parliamentary
Union (IPU) for the Federal Parliaments of 147 countries, confirms
that most parliamentary assemblies, have indeed come to embrace the
secret ballot mode of election to select their leaders. IPU,
established in 1889, is the global organization of national
parliaments. With headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, and a
permanent observer status in the United Nations General Assembly
(UNGA), it currently has 179 Member Parliaments and 12 regional
parliamentary bodies as associates.

Of the 147 countries from different
continents captured in IPU online record, 118 apply the secret
ballot model in the election of presiding officers of their
respective national parliaments, amounting to about 80%. There are
195 UN-recognized sovereign countries in the world today. Official
statistics of the UN shows that the continent of Africa has 54,
Asia 48, Europe 44, Oceania 14, North America 23 and South America
12.

From the accessible data about the national
parliaments of 36 nations on the African continent including
Nigeria, only four adopt the open ballot system for the election of
their principal officers. That is just about 11%. Out of the
forty-three European countries whose parliaments were examined from
the data supplied by IPU, only eight which is approximately 19%,
use open voting for election of their leaders.

In Asia, out of 27 nation states studied, 20
apply secret voting while 7 use open ballot (that is 74% – 26%). Of
the 30 countries x-rayed from both North and South America,
twenty-one (70%) employ secret balloting and nine (30%) operate
open voting system. Data about the national parliaments of 11
countries in the Oceanian region were provided. Ten (90%) adopt
secret ballot in the conduct of their parliamentary leadership
election while only one make use of the open ballot method.

Today, what obtains for the election of
principal officers in most international parliaments is the secret
ballot mode – from the IPU which is made of national parliaments
from across the globe to regional and sub-regional parliamentary
assemblies like the European Parliament, Parliamentary Assembly of
the Council of Europe (PACE), Organisation for Security and
Co-Operation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly (OSCE PA), Pan
African Parliament (PAP), East African Legislative Assembly (EALA)
to ECOWAS Parliament and many others.

The NASS management team in conducting the
leadership election, must refuse to pander to the whims and
caprices of those who are bent on thwarting democratic processes,
in a bid to install their lackeys and allies as presiding officers.
No voting procedure other the secret ballot as prescribed by the
extant rules and guidelines of both houses of NASS should be used
for the election. We must understand that the independence of the
legislature is vital to the growth and sustenance of democracy.

In the words of Edward Gibbon (May 8, 1737–
January 16, 1794), who was a historian, writer and parliamentarian
in the British House of Commons, between 1774 and 1784, “The
principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the
legislative power is nominated by the executive.”

Michael Jegede, a media professional
writes from Abuja

07065574368

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