Everybody in Sri Lanka agrees that the present electoral system must be changed. The proportional representation is not suitable to heterogeneous social system. It is workable in countries such as Germany, Italy, Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

The first part the post system in our society nurtured the political party system to represent the voter through his choice. The relationship of his choice and elected candidate developed a mutual responsibility over a long time. It is true that the system led to undesirable majorities forming governments that could not exactly represent the exact view of the society. But its advantages clearly outweigh the disadvantages.

More over in Sri Lanka the proportional representation has now become a form of communal representation judging from the present trends. An analysis of various representation system would clearly show that the PR system is clearly popular in those countries where there are number of major political parties. Sri Lanka has a number of early Constitution Orders in Council during the British period, in Which provision was made for communal representation. The failure of the communal representation was summed up in the Donoughmore Commission Report as follows:

"`85 the communal representation, is, as it were, a canker on the body politic, eating deeper and deeper into the vital energies of the people, breeding self-interest suspicion and animosity, poisoning the new growth, of political consciousness, and effectively preventing the development of a national corporate spirit `85"

The solutions could be found firstly by looking into the German system and determining of how much of that system could be adopted in Sri Lanka. The main advantage in this system is the adoption of the first past the post system partly and adoption of proportional representation partly.

To make provisions for minority representation in the legislature, in Mauritius, 62 members are elected by first — past the post system and 8 "additional members" are elected as "best losers" being the most successful losing candidate of each community.

Another system is the multi member constituency. Since 1947, Sri Lanka has had an experience in this system. In Finland the parties do not present multi candidate lists or indicate a preferred order among them, but submit a number of separate candidates. The voters then choose individual candidates only, but the votes are aggregated by the party, within each constituency to determine the allocation of seats.