Tag: proportional representation

Categories
Articles

J'accuse: Stable government and its price

So David Cameron got to move to number 10 after all. With a little help from his new-found friends, Cameron (and Clegg) ushered in an era of “collaborative politics” that promises to combine effective representation with reasoned administration for the greater good of the people. The much-maligned monster that is coalition government settled in and is already working on an Emergency Budget to tackle the continuing ails of the economy (British, European and worldwide). And there we were thinking that pesky third parties would ruin the show.

When the pros and cons of coalition governments are being discussed, the question of stable government always figures as one of primary concern. The fear of government breaking down or collapsing mid-term and of provoking multiple elections over short spans of time have been one of the main arguments against the possibility of coalition governments – that and the ugly duckling of a “kingmaker” party – a minor party able to call the shots on who gets to form a government.

Whenever such considerations are made we are making implied choices between stronger representation and stable government. The implication seems to be that perfect, proportional representation is not conducive to stable government. In a way that is because, given our “black or white” bipartisan all-or-nothing approach, we are automatically suspicious of compromise politics and confidence building. But is our “stable government” system really so perfect after all?

Stable or bust

Speaking to the party faithful at the PN General Council on Friday, minister Tonio Borg reassured those present that “the government will be safeguarding the people’s clear verdict given in the general election two years ago which was for the Nationalist Party to govern the country for five years.” This was Tonio’s summary refusal of the PL thesis of a government hanging onto power by its talons. Forget Auditor General investigations, forget disquisitions on Erskine-May and forget companies with ugly acronyms like BWSC.

It’s all about who is in power for five years. The reverse side of the coin is the same. Look at the fracas in parliament – the yelling, the motions, counter-motions, the childish insults and defences (you’re drunk and she’s pregnant – oh the shame) – it all boils down to one thing and one thing only: the PL wanted so desperately to bring this one seat-majority government crumbling down (on a vote which technically does not do that) and to undermine whatever sense of legitimacy GonziPN still has to govern.

gonzidhondt

When the results of the last election were out, our Bertoon had Gonzi celebrating on a small bucket representing his “relative majority”. A party that garnered less than 50 per cent of the vote in the country would govern, thanks to a constitutional mechanism of seat compensation. Our caption read: “D’hondt worry, we’re happy” – a nod to the D’hondt system of calculation in elections – invented by a Belgian (Belgian? now that’s a sure source for stable governments). The toon was our way of saying “at least someone’s happy”. Sure. GonziPN had every right to be happy as the next legitimate government of the nation, having snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. But was the voter really getting a good deal in constitutional and representative terms?

The cost of ‘stable government’

Two years ago a party that had a 1,500 vote advantage over the next party that had failed to get to the 50 per cent threshold could claim two extra seats in “constitutional compensation”. Those two extra seats (voting value approximately 7,000) are given to the party with the relative majority in order to ensure that it can govern for the next five or so years – assuming that all the members on its side of the House will vote in its favour.

So we have constructed our “stable government” around a fictive majority that in effect exercises something akin to absolute legislative power in parliament. If government wills it, anything becomes law – unless its bench members decide (knowingly or out of fatigue) to vote against it. The Opposition may – rightly or wrongly – yell, cry, perform its least flattering resurrection of 80’s parliamentary thuggery, walk out in indignation and shout “foul” to an angry nation. It may do all that and more but, barring a revolution, the government is as firmly in place as a limpet – crisis averted, n’est-ce pas?

There is no coalition partner forced upon a party that has not obtained the majority of national votes. No coalition partner to act as a moderator of the more radical of the government policies that might only have enjoyed the favour of a national minority (relative majority it well may be, but it is still a government by national minority). The closest we can get to the coalition partner scenario is in the infamous “rebel backbenchers” picture where, for reasons that can be highly volatile (not as clear as those of an elected coalition partner), a fraction of the party in government decides to make use of his newfound disproportionate weight.

I don’t know about you but if that’s stability, then give me instability any day. Not that I would want instability, but this kind of conundrum really makes the examination of an alternative scenario with coalition partner worth revisiting. AD chairman Mike Briguglio wrote of the current state of affairs in an article that also appeared in J’accuse (Symbol of a Stagnated Duopoly). At one point Mike suggests that the Nationalist Party might even pull off a victory at the next general election. What then?

Mike wrote: “The Nationalists can save their day if the economy recovers, yet, if in government alone, in the next election, we can only expect more arrogance, disregard for the environment, confessional politics and a lack of civil liberties and social rights.” The “if in government alone” bit did not escape me. It is obvious that AD of all parties would entertain thoughts of coalitions in Clegg style and Briguglio’s message is clear – if the Nationalists were to be part of the next government it would best be with a check and balance system guaranteed by a coalition partner.

bert4j_100516
Cleggmania?

The problem in Malta is that voters will weigh this option with the usual suspicion. Elections are depicted as an all or nothing battle themselves. The rules are such that – as I have shown – the trophy of governance is intricately merged with the trophy of absolute power at all costs. Even in such telling times as these, when the bipartisan representation exposes all its ugly warts, messengers like Briguglio will find it incredibly hard to sell the idea of a different form of “collaborative government” that has just been launched in the UK. Selling the idea might not be enough – without electoral reform, laws on party financing and a clear awareness among the voting population, we are far, very far, from being anywhere near the kind of movement that brought the UK Cleggmania.

Meanwhile the BWSC saga with all the parliamentary repercussions rolls on. Joseph Muscat of the Same, Same but Different Party has just presented his 15 points to battle corruption. The monster, once defined, failed to bring the PN government down. So now Don Quixote invents a few swords and sabres and bandies them about. We shall see how gullible the voters can be by the way they accept this new set of “promises”. In our analysis of the 15 points on the blog we point out (among other things) that:

(a) promising a working electricity system is just the mediocre kind of electoral gimmick you can expect from our bipartisan stable system in the 21st century; (b) you cannot fight corruption if you are unable to define it legally; (c) there is no such thing as retroactive application of criminal law; (d) when Joseph Muscat promises to implement a directive he is stating the obvious – he will have to implement directives when in government whether he likes it or not; and (e) a law on party financing must not be limited to “corruption” whatever that means – transparency means knowing even what are the “legitimate” sources of party funds.

Somebody stabilise that euro

I know it’s egoistic of me but I have begun to notice that ever since I booked a June trip to New York, there seems to be a general conspiracy to threaten my holiday. As if Iceland’s bucolic volcano and its random outbursts of paralytic ash were not enough, the combined effect of Greek woes and economic disaster on the continent have daily gnawed away at the purchasing power of the beloved euro, once I cross the pond to the other side. Also, if you please, those bigoted maniacs that fabricate religious excuses at the same rate as they strap bombs to their chests have upped the ante once again in the city that never sleeps.

Conspiracy or no conspiracy, I have “New York or Burst” (as Balki Bartokamous would have it) tattooed on my brain. No volcano, euro devaluation or fanatic terrorist will come between me and the joys of the 24-hour Apple Store on Fifth Avenue – open 24/365… beat that GRTU! How’s that for stable determination?

www.akkuza.com has been on a go-slow this Ascension Long Weekend in Luxembourg. We’ll be discussing stable governments all next week so do not miss out on the action.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Categories
Politics

Hard to Stomach

After spending five days of demonising the Liberal Democrats, the Daily Mail is finding it hard to stomach the idea of a coalition government. The Mail’s reaction to the share of the LibDems in Cameron’s new government is symptomatic of the “traditional” reaction to power sharing deals that result from coalitions.

It is hard for the politics of the personal to adapt to this new reality where your political adversary before the election could be sharing the corridors of power with you the next. That too is a not so often cited advantage of proportional representation. Smear mongering is potentially reduced because unless it is really justified and unless it is definitely part of the political reasoning (as in exposing criminal links or something of the sort that provides a service to the voter), every participant has to remember that his interlocutor might be part of the government forming majority come post-election day.

The Mail – caricature that it is – still contains articles calling the LibDems “harlots” and hardly manages to hide its disdain at the share of the cabinet won by the LibDems (and don’t forget that Nick Clegg is deputy PM). You’d expect a pro-Tory paper like the Mail to avoid jabs at coalition partners so early in the day. It shows an inability to adapt to the new realities of sophisticated politics where the much maligned “compromise” is really a result of complex dealing and thrashing out based on reason and not presumptious one party rule by constitutionally guaranteed (or electoral law engineered) parliamentary majorities.

A coalition partner is, in a way,  an opposition party in power – an additional check and balance to the prudent use of legislative authority by the administrative branch of government. The Mail may view the LibDems as a harlot – quite an expensive one to maintain – but my guess is that they will get used to this harlot much more quickly than they like to think (especially if the fixed-term parliament proposal is included in the Queen’s speech).

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Categories
Articles

Well Hung

Why Cameron would love to be Maltese

I cannot help wondering how David Cameron must wish that he was a Maltese politician. Rather than sitting at the negotiating table with that pesky Nick Clegg (the tiddler that he is) he’d be sitting firmly, decisively and stably at the head of some carcade on Tower Road, Sliema, celebrating his relative majority victory – the constitutional provisions written for the “Big Two” would have done the rest.

How silly of the Brits not to have thought of the advanced electoral systems that have been refined through the ages by the PLPN. Cameron would not be fretting over conjuring some “big, open and comprehensive” offer to lure Nick into his coalition government. He would be sitting happily at the head of a fictitiously constructed majority of seats – purposely engineered to compensate for any defects resulting from the expression of the will of the people.

Of course, the above scenario would perforce include an electoral system that would preclude any of the Lib Dems obtaining a seat in the first place – and Dave’s your uncle. Poor Dave. He cannot enjoy the automatic coronation for relative majorities proffered to the anointed ones under the Maltese Constitution: instead he will have to sweat it out to build a government that really represents a majority of the elected parties. A coalition between Tories and Lib Dems (18 million votes) just makes it into a decent 59 per cent of the electorate.

Numerologies

Let’s face it: the UK election results were disappointing for the movement of reform that was promised under Cleggmania. The Lib Dems actually obtained five fewer seats than last time around but, and that is a big but, let us look at the numbers that count. Out of 30 million voters, 11 million chose Tory, nine million chose Labour and seven million opted for the Lib Dems. A close call, no?

Let us translate those figures into percentages of the voting population. The Tories had 36 per cent of the votes, Labour 29 per cent and the Lib Dems 23 per cent. No absolute majority. No biggie here. Vote-wise, a Lib-Lab coalition (52 per cent) forms a parliamentary majority as much as a Tory-Lib Dem coalition (59 per cent) would.

The situation goes awry when we see the number of seats that each party won in Parliament expressed as a percentage. The Tories got 47 per cent of the seats (with 36 per cent of the vote), Brown’s Labour got 39 per cent of the seats (with 29 per cent of the vote) and the Liberals? Ah, the Liberals’ nine million votes (23 per cent of the voting population) got… drum roll please…. nine per cent of the seats in Parliament. Nine per cent. You read it right.

So, disappointing as the result may be, it is not for the reasons most people have come to expect. You see the result is NOT disappointing because now, more than ever, it is an eye-opener of the blatant distortive effect that an electoral system plotted out to ensure bipartisan “stability” has on effective parliamentary representation. An electoral law that serves to dumb down representation in order to preserve stability has this twisted effect on democratic rationality: there is none.

Election Night
Image by Patrick Rasenberg via Flickr

Clegg’s Law

It might not be about to replace Sod’s Law, but Clegg’s Law is a firm candidate for the prizes of Phyrric Victory, Lose-lose Situation of the Year and Sacrificial Lamb on the Altar of Democracy rolled into one. Clegg, you see, is in a dilemma. He is exactly at the point where all the naysayers of proportional representation want him to be: the much demonised and warned-against “kingmaker”.

Before the election Clegg made two semi-commitments regarding possible coalition governments. The first was that he believed (erroneously, according to J’accuse) that the party with the relative majority of votes had some sort of moral right to govern. The second was that no matter who he formed a coalition with, Gordon Brown would no longer be Prime Minister (again, with the benefit of hindsight a premature claim). As things stand, these conditions would point to a coalition government with the Bullingdon Babyface.

It’s not so easy though. Following the early results, the Lib Dems put their kingmaker position up to auction. The initial bid had to conform to a number of conditions, but most important of all was the eternally elusive question of voting reform. Because, you see, the Lib Dems had to wear two hats in these elections. First they wore the hat of the normal party, with policies to iron out, programmes to put into effect and plans for government – coalition or otherwise. Secondly though, they also had to wear the hat of pioneers of change – the hat of the only party insisting openly on a clear reform of the rules of the game.

The kingmaker has no crown

It is this dilemma that risks turning Clegg’s brave stand into a schizophrenic disaster. The Lib Dem’s bipolar situation raises their stakes tenfold. They have a duty to the electorate – a mandate obtained both via policy promises (Hat number 1) and reform promises (Hat number 2). Sitting at the coalition table with someone like Cameron means negotiating a compromise plan. Cameron knows that. His “openness” has involved, until now, no offer for electoral reform.

Clegg can stand firm on electoral reform – making it a sine qua non of the negotiations, thus risking being labelled a stirrer of instability. This would not only throw mud on Clegg’s face but also on future possibilities of stronger electoral performances of the Lib Dems as a party. In the eyes of the electorate, Cameron’s refusal to work for a fairer representative system will be eclipsed by Clegg’s breaking down of a possible stronger stable government. The kingmaker shamed – every naysayer’s dream.

Then there is Brown. Rather than bow out gracefully, he has (rightly, again in our opinion) pointed out that, should Cameron fail to entice Clegg with his all or nothing approach, then he is willing to provide the second option for a coalition. Clegg is still bound by his “governing without Brown” promise and Brown knows that. Which is probably why he has dangled the electoral reform carrot in front of him. Brown accepts a fast track for a referendum on electoral reform. With Brown, Clegg would get a fair chance to discuss reform (note, though, that the referendum might not succeed).

Constitutionally, there would be nothing wrong should Clegg opt for a Lib-Lab coalition. Cameron’s questionable moral authority to govern simply because of his relative majority of votes can be put even further into representative perspective when we look at it geographically. Do you know how many seats the Conservatives won in Scotland? One out of 59: Dumfriesshire. They only did slightly better in Wales, wining eight out of 40 seats. The best bet for a strong Tory government would probably be an Independent England. Otherwise, they have about as much moral authority to govern certain parts of the UK as Edward Longshanks.

Democracy in the 21st

So Clegg is in a right fix. Stable and moral government under current rules means playing along with the game and forgetting about electoral reform. A Labour coalition might open a long shot for the referendum, but what does that say for the chances of the referendum actually succeeding after the predictable vilification Clegg will suffer for not having chosen the horse with the highest feelings of legitimacy?

Clegg’s fix is the fix of every other party that will try to break a bipartisan mentality, and I have begun to strongly believe that the solution for change is not to wait for the incumbents (PLPN, Labservatives) to cash in on their feeble promises of reform – but to educate, educate and educate the electorate. It is after all the electorate that needs to understand that the current status quo only results in electing two versions of the same, the same but different politics intent on performing in the inevitable race to mediocrity.

Joseph 2010 tries Eddie 1981

That was the verdict after a tearful (is that true?) Joseph Muscat led his angered troops out of what passes as our temple of representative democracy following a heated vote and ruling by newbie speaker Frendo. Labour stormed out of Parliament in a collective tantrum after Frendo opted to re-listen to votes in order to understand whether allegations by members from the government benches would be substantiated – and whether MP for Gozo Justyne Caruana had also erred in her vote.

’Coz Mario did it first, you know. He was tired, miskin. Exhausting, this government business. He said “yes” instead of “no” and then it was too late. The House of Representatives (of what?) descended into absolute chaos as bullies started a yelling competition while Tonio Borg tried to make a point of order. Our representative relative majority government and relatively incapable Opposition went about representing us as well as they could.

Prior to the voting debacle, grown-up men on the government benches defended the Power Station contract and agreements blindly and ignored the big questions that had been raised in the Auditor General’s report. Then grown-up men from the Opposition benches had a parallel discussion with presumably a different interlocutor. It was evident from the discussion that all sides were intent on speaking and no one was listening. Our young journalist of an Opposition leader rued the opportunity to have the debate screened live on public TV so he could preen and crow in a show paid for by our taxes.

At the bottom of the power station contract issues lie the problems of transparency, of political party funding, of reforming our system of representation in order to create a wider gap between private interests and partisan politics. None of this was discussed, except for when the renegade Franco Debono reminded the House of the need for a law on party funding. His calls were soon drowned by the ruckus and by what has been described farcically as an “attakk fahxi” on Justyne Caruana – Malta’s new version of Burma’s Aun San Suu Kyi.

bert4j_100509

Well Hung

It’s pretty clear that if the UK electorate did not vote strongly enough to force through the necessary electoral reform, it will be a hundred times more difficult to get that kind of message through to this masochistic electorate of ours. Our PLPN farce that has once again descended to incredible levels of mediocrity this week will hang on for another mandate. Whether we have the not so smooth operators of PN or the bungling drama queens of Labour in government after the next election, J’accuse is still of the same opinion as it has been in recent times – the greatest losers are the voters, hung parliament or not.

Malta’s number one political blog and mediawatch still has the same address: www.akkuza.com – blogging so you don’t have to.

This article and accompanying Bertoon appeared in today’s Malta Independent on Sunday.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Categories
Politics

Fawlty Electoral Systems

John Cleese explains Proportional Representation in a promo for the SDP/Liberal Alliance in the 1983 campaign. Thanks to CC for the pointer.
You may not be “involved” (now now, that’s a lazy argument innit?) but it’s intellectually educational – whatever that may mean (yawn).

“Compromise is not a dirty word.” Bipartisanism is.

Interesting:

A Constitutional discussion for proportional representation for the island of Saint Lucia (former British Colony).

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]