Vas

by Knip

Posted to Poetry and Politics on 2004-06-22 08:48:00

Parent message is 665829
i’ve been a proponent of proportional representation ever since i took a canadian government class by correspondence about 10 years ago…various parties have promised it in their campaign promises over canadian history, but it has never been done on a federal basis

the ndp instituted it in manitoba for about 30 years…see this for more info

also ireland runs a proportional representation…you may want to query buddhist punk about what he thinks of it the next time you see him here…i think i asked him once and he said he liked it

the big knock against it is that it tends to produce minority governments…but this is from a country scared of minority governments…the countries that use PR and are used to minority governments do fine by it…i think such countries include germany, italy, ireland, and maybe greece…there are others

in my mind a minority government under PR produces a government that must work together with other parties to blend policies that are reflective of the desires of the population…imagine…what a concept

the drawback i see is that nothing forces the major vote-getter to ally themselves with other big vote getters…an example election

conservatives – 28%
liberals – 23%
green – 14%
communist – 14%
libertarian – 10%
fascist – 9%
independant – 2%

common sense would dictate that the conservatives would form a government with the liberals and produce blended policy…but in reality, they would likely form a government with the communists and libertarians to get their majority…a significant chunk of the population is left without a voice

sometimes the system backfires…for instance, in bangladesh, parties are constantly switching sides, and getting any policy through becomes problematic…add to that the prevalence of personality politics and cronyism and you have quite the dysfunctional little government (i wrote a paper once)

but all in all, i like to think that we, as reasonable canadians, could get used to such a system and make it work to our benefit…

but i’ve always been an optimist

🙂


The Literary Kicks message boards were active from 2001 to 2004.