<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Laetca @ Aug 28 2008, 01:29 PM)
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<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (gingergenius @ Aug 28 2008, 10:56 AM)
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I wouldn't promote democracy so much when our Government was elected by only 20% of Britons[/b]
That 20% has more to do with the way voting is organised in the UK, then with democracy not working. Voting is optional and there's that stupid first past the post system, how can you expect the result of the election to reflect in any way the opinion of everybody?
Same in the US, about 30% of the people who are allowed to vote actually registered to do so?[/b][/quote]
Firstly, GG's figure is flawed. The split of the vote in the 2005 election was thus:
Labour: 33% (9,562,122 votes)
Conservative: 32% (8,772,598)
Liberal Democrat: 22.1% (5,981,874)
At the end of the day is that under First Past the post, the most votes went to Labour and the most seats went to Labour. Thus, as a Parliamentary democracy, the party with an overall majority of seats will be asked to form a government. In a race as tight as that,
of course the winning party is going to go away with a figure of 33% because thats how our representative democracy works.
I disagree that First Past the Post is a flawed election method. What exactly would you rather have? A government elected with a
33% share of the vote or a government formed thanks to the few MPs of a tiny fringe party of which they barely got 5% of the vote? We've seen Labour with James Callaghan cling to power with the help of the Liberals and John Major appeasing the Ulster Unionists in exchange for their support. Is the alternative of allowing the greater national agenda to be dictated by small time parties with a seat count of under five really that much better than FPTP overall? I don't think so.
Proportional Representation is also flawed, you're relying on cobbling together coalitions of parties, usually with different ideas and manifestos and expect them to compromise. The electorate who have voted for the largest party are disadvantaged because their election platform most likely has been jettisonned and sabotaged in order to please the plethoria of smaller parties upon which their support is needed for the survival of their government. Israel is a good example of this where Labour & Likud in the past and now Kadima today are at the mercy of several parties who sit on the extreme right of the political spectrum. Their percentage of the vote would barely hit 5 to 10% of Israelis and yet they have a stranglehold on Israeli government policy. How exactly is that an improvement?
We've seen in the UK that PR has been used and abused. Abused in order to keep Labour in power and used as a tool to handcuff the Unionists and Nationalists of Ulster together whether they like it or not. It is obvious that the various systems of PR that have been implemented across the UK have their plus and minus points but it is also obvious that we, as a nation-state of nations, are not ready for proportional representation and that actually, it could go further towards the disenfranchisement and alienation of the British electorate.
I think we should promote democracy, our nation is run upon a democracy with strong and independent checks and balances in the judiciary and in the Lords. No amount of bolding inaccurate headline figures which only confirm that Britain is just a polarised politically as it was twenty years go is going to change that.
Different nations have different ways of making democracy work and while it may not seem "fair" in our eyes, it is those constitutional compromises that ensure stability, financial development and personal betterment. France has their constitutional settlement, Germany too has their interpretation of democracy as does Isreal (occupied territories obviously discounted). Britain's approach has evolved over the centuries and has changed gradually to each challenge thrown at its feet. It has survived wars, revolutions and all manners of other kinds of crisis but it has endured and has provided the country with a half decent barometer of electoral legitimacy.
Thus, I'd say we are right to promote democracy but only at the pace and choosing that those nations wish to go at. I disagree with "nation making" and I don't agree with chasing people into hasty elections or artificial systems of government which bear no relation to the culture or traditions of that country.
EDIT: Also, I might want to point out that the only reason why the Sultan of Oman has been able to modernise his nation has been down to the military, political and financial support given to him by HM Government of the United Kingdom. Read up on the SAS's involvement in Oman in the 1970s, its pretty awesome.
