Glad we agree, Medium Roast (great name),

What I see in Sri Lanka is that they have an empowered president. I like paper presidents much better, with the power of managing different political parties left to a prime-minister.

As soon as there is a president, we have a winner-taking-all, and that is bad news. Sometimes a great president is picked, but the next one undoes all the good work. An elite close to the president gets all the good bones.

What I also see is that Sri Lanka has multi-seat proportional voting. However, too many of these multi-seat districts have just a few seats, so the proportional value is not all that great. When there are six seats or less, the centrist parties tend to rake most of them in.

I am a fan of not too many parties, but particularly when one party (or combined party) has the majority of seats all by itself, I consider that a failure of democracy.

It is through negotiations and debate, coalitions and truly listening to the population at large via honest election results, that the best governments rise to the top.

Power should never be in the hands of one group for too long. If possible, it should always be shared. Winner-take-all should be eliminated completely, but stability ensured by not having too many parties.

A color copier has red, blue, yellow and black ink, so four parties of some stature are a must. Sure, it is fine to have pink and purple, too. But not too many, not twelve parties.

The Egyptian pyramid with a single point in top is not good for democracy.

The Mexican pyramid with a flat top where different groups can rise from all four sides and can communicate and decide via majority rule how to move forward -- that is smart.

I hope for Sri Lanka that the people can learn from this turmoil and make the country find its best path yet.