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The Federated States of Micronesia's Presidential Election System and Proprosed Constitutional Analysis (Working Paper) [2002] JSPL 12; (2002) 6 Journal of South Pacific Law

The Federated States of Micronesia's Presidential Election System and Proposed Constitutional Analysis

By L. Sohnel Johnson, LLB

Formulating a Presidential Election System: A Challenge

One of the most contentious political battles testing the already thinning common ground for unity in the Federated States of Micronesia^[1] (hereinafter FSM) is accentuated by the challenge to formulate a presidential election system that would best suit the diverse cultural and ethnic conditions of the FSM people. Although considerable doubts and criticisms over the present FSM presidential election system have persistently been echoing throughout the four FSM States since the early 1980’s, the first formal challenge was launched during the 1990 FSM Constitutional Convention.^[2] Recognizing the need to weaken the growing power of the Congress of FSM (hereinafter Congress) over the Office of the President of FSM (hereinafter President), the 1990 Convention sought ways to diminish such power by proposing that the people should be allowed to directly vote for the president and vice president through a simple majority vote.^[3] However, emotionally tangled in a web of “distrust and suspicion amongst the States”, the 31 delegates to the Convention not only failed to function as a collaborative body representing one nation and one people, but they could not successfully devise and agree upon a practical selection process for a new presidential election system suitable for the people.^[4] The disunity within this Convention clearly shows why none of the thirteen different proposals for a new FSM presidential election system were among the 24 proposals that the Convention adopted. ^[5] Glenn Petersen, in his article entitled “The Federated States of Micronesia’s 1990 Constitutional Convention: Calm Before the Strom?”, summed up the overwhelming attitudes of the delegates when he said this:

...it was feared that any attempt to weaken the central government [or Congress] as a means of enhancing the power of the states was likely to result in an equally problematic situation in which the differential sizes and strengths of the states would allow one or two states to dominate the federation at the expense of the others. Such a solution would have replicated—rather than remedied—the problem the delegates had set out to resolve.^[6]