Last Monday Canadians were bemused by news of the election results in the Northwest Territories. Some of the candidates had unusual qualifications. The competition was intense and some winners weren’t announced until the next day. Then there was the question of whom the legislative assembly is going to choose as Speaker, Premier and six cabinet ministers. That decision gets made by consensus next week.

Unlike Canada’s other territories and provinces they don’t use political parties in Yellowknife. Everyone runs as an independent. The 11 MLAs without portfolios take on the role of being opposition critics.

The province of Ontario is also having an election this month. On Wednesday it appears likely the incumbent Liberal government will get another majority, with a predicted 43 percent of the votes. The last time a party received the support of over half the electorate was 1937.

In the last three decades pluralities as low as 38 percent allowed each of the three main parties in Ontario to gain majority status in the provincial parliament (aka Queen’s Park, Toronto.) None have achieved admiration or respect.

The previous Conservative and NDP governments generated considerable controversy and labour unrest. The current Premier, Liberal Dalton McGuinty, is notorious for having reneged on a number of campaign promises, particularly pledges not to raise taxes and to close down the province’s coal burning power plants.

Voter turnout in Ontario elections has been steadily declining, and in 2003 was 57 percent.

Beside electing their local MPPs, Ontario voters are being asked to decide a referendum on proportional representation. If 60 percent agree, and if that includes a majority of voters in 60 percent of the ridings, the First Past the Post Plurality “horse race” will be upgraded to a system called Mixed Member Proportional (Ontario rules.)

Under MMP 90 local ridings will continue to be decided by First Past the Post, the candidate with the most votes wins. But there will also be a province wide vote for 39 seats, 30 percent of the legislature. In that ballot voters get to pick a party, which may or may not be the same as that of the local candidate they voted for. Each party must announce before the election a list of candidates for the at large seats. Election officials will compare the party affiliations of the MPPS elected locally with the totals cast on the party ballot. Then they will use the party lists, from the top down, to add members until each party gets their share of the provincial party vote. Parties have to get at least 3 percent of the votes cast to be considered.

I am going to vote in favour of MMP. Like many others I think strict First Past the Post works fairly only if there are just two major parties. That hasn’t been the case in Ontario for a long time.

I would have preferred the option voters in British Columbia are considering, the Single Transferable Vote. That system completely does away with First Past the Post by having the voter rank his or her preferences for the local riding candidates. STV was almost approved in BC’s last election, getting 57 percent, just below the required super majority. It’s on the ballot again in 2008.

What I like about the MMP option is who made the proposal. Following BC’s lead, Ontario’s elected officials turned to a nonpartisan Citizens’ Assembly to study the issue of electoral reform and make a recommendation. Member of this assembly were randomly chosen from the voter’s lists in their respective ridings. They spent months investigating democratic systems around the world and then more months debating what would be best for the province. Their final report was adopted by a vote of 94 to 8.

I followed the deliberations of both the BC and Ontario assemblies on the web and read their reports. It seemed to me they did at least as good a job as the committees that do the work in our parliaments. They established beyond doubt that First Past the Post is broken and each came up with a reasonable alternative. I’m hoping both provinces end up adopting their respective assemblys’ recommendations. Then the rest of Canada can compare the two and judge for themselves.

I will be surprised however, if MPP is approved this Wednesday. Many voters aren’t aware of the arguments in favour of reform and will, out of caution, stick with what they know.

There are over 8 million voters in Ontario. Yet election officials printed just 500,000 copies of the final report of the Assembly. The mailing I received from Elections Ontario gave only the wording of the referendum and said nothing of why the Assembly made its recommendation. The debate in BC was much better informed.

I’ve seen a number of columns and editorials in newspapers defending the status quo for specious reasons.

They point out the new system would increase the number of politicians, without acknowledging that the number of ridings was recently reduced or that Ontario has far fewer provincial politicians per capita than the Canadian average.

They claim that MMP would lead to more minority governments and more elections, when in fact the experience around the world is that MMP produces coalition governments and that MMP elections happen at about the same frequency as First Past the Post.

Another scare tactic is to raise the specter of extreme fringe groups gaining the balance of power, but that could happen in any multi-party system, including First Past the Post.

My impression is most of those defending the old way are partisans who believe their party is likely to win the next election, or political junkies who really enjoy watching the game as it currently played, ie those who think winning is the only thing that matters.

There are two arguments favouring First Past the Post that are valid. It is the easiest way to get rid of politicians and governments who have angered the public. And it puts pressure on unsuccessful third parties to merge with another party that’s shares some of their concerns.

That may happen with the New Democratic Party. This year for the first time my union and the local labour council are not supporting the NDP, in retribution for the party expelling CAW leader Buzz Hargrove. This was because the autoworkers have adopted a policy of strategic voting, supporting Liberals where the NDP have little chance of winning. I’m not the only one who expect to see the NDP die or merge with the Liberals in the next few years. It’s never recovered from it’s incompetent showing when they unexpectedly won a majority in 1990.

But the Green Party may replace them, allowing the Liberals or more likely the Conservatives to continue playing divide and conquer.

I’m supporting MMP because it is a way to give the political parties a chance to rehabilitate themselves, by forcing them to compromise with each other. Electoral reform however, may not be enough to accomplish that task.

Beyond the unfair playing field the parties have been debased by an invasion of marketeers and spin masters on one hand and the cult of leadership on the other.

Today’s voters are also sophisticated consumers. They know marketing bullshit when they see it. Whether buying a product or voting for a politician they can tell when the hype exceeds the reality, and they have come to expect being lied to and misled.

The leaders of political parties have assumed the powers of corporation CEOs. They set policy themselves without consultation with their party’s rank and file.

In the current Ontario election the big issue has been a promise by Conservative Leader John Tory to publicly fund all religious schools in the province: Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, etc. There has been overwhelming opposition to this idea, even from other Conservative candidates. Tory made this proposal on his own, without mentioning it at the last policy convention of his party. He’s now backed down somewhat, saying last week that he would allow a free vote on the matter. That hasn’t helped him in the polls.

Ontario already funds a separate school system for Catholic students, a constitutional requirement dating back to confederation. But separate school funding used to be restricted to the elementary grades. Then in 1985 Conservative Premier Bill Davis, just before he retired, surprised everyone by reversing his party’s policy and extending full funding to the separate high schools. His principal secretary at the time was Mr. Tory. The Conservatives lost the next election a few months later.

Although some pundits say that the opposition to Tory’s plan is Islamophobia others are noticing that there seems today to be strong support for melding the separate and public schools into a single secular system.

The province of Newfoundland and Labrador ended their religious schools with a referendum and constitutional amendment in 1997. Ontario should do the same, but first the issue should be referred to another citizens’ assembly for a thorough and fair investigation and debate.

It’s no secret that I think political parties are becoming obsolete, that there are better ways for democracy to function. But I also think demanding greater accountability, honesty and transparency in party politics is worth trying so long as they dominate the political landscape. In the meantime alternatives like the citizens assemblies should be given a chance to prove themselves.

One of ideas that drew me to the Euston Manifesto was this paragraph:

We defend liberal and pluralist democracies against all who make light of the differences between them and totalitarian and other tyrannical regimes. But these democracies have their own deficits and shortcomings. The battle for the development of more democratic institutions and procedures, for further empowering those without influence, without a voice or with few political resources, is a permanent part of the agenda of the Left.

Apparently, accusing someone of being in line with the BNP is very popular these days. Either that, or rather strangely, being in the pay of Zionists. Take your pick. Perhaps you could be a Zionist neocon BNP supporter?

The New Statesman accused Andrew Anthony of coming close to the BNP’s line of arguments, and Terry Eagleton accused just about everybody who disagrees with him on the issue of the war on terror of a similar move to a fascist state of mind:

In his new introduction, Prof Eagleton says sarcastically of Amis’s views: “Not the ramblings of a British National Party thug but the reflections of Martin Amis, leading luminary of the English metropolitan literary world.”

He adds that 16 years ago when Ideology was first published, Amis would have recognised “the folly and ignorance of believing that authoritarianism and injustice can secure the defence of liberty”.

The reason for Amis’s change of heart, he believes, was the “so-called war against terror”.

“It is this which has inspired a cluster of liberals and Leftists in his circle… to defend Western freedom by actively undermining it.”

It is not the point of this post to point out the complexities and risks of any reaction to extremist Islamist terrorism, or the careful balance that needs to be struck between security and freedom. However, Eagleton and The New Statesman may be disappointed to learn that the BNP’s most recent manifesto states that “The BNP does not support sending British soldiers to die in foreign conflicts at the behest of the United States, as is currently happening in Iraq.” They also would only use troops when British interests were at stake, so no Bosnia or Sierra Leone then.

Mind you, Eagleton may not be so concerned about that, note his parochial choice of words above: “to defend Western Freedom”. Eagleton fails to note that the cluster of liberals and Leftists he disgorges such vitriol upon, are much more likely than those he probably feels more comfortable with to be interested in the freedom of all peoples of the world. As Paul Berman puts it, “freedom for others, means safety for ourselves. Let us be for the freedom of others.”

Those on the left with an ideological commitment to humanitarian intervention are certainly further from the BNP than those who warm their toes at the hearth of the Muslim Brotherhood. The totalitarian BNP’s bigoted and racist stances also have much more in common with the forms of extremist Islam the UK’s anti-totalitarian leftists spend much of their time opposing. Of course, neither Eagleton or The New Statesmen put forward this BNP line with any real seriousness, but merely as a slur or public shaming of those that raise difficult issues or cross some form of leftist “line”.

The UK’s anti-totalitarian left coalesced and solidified after September 11th 2001. It existed before of course, as did the similar groups of critics, nihilists, and apologists who have been proven wrong over other totalitarian threats in the 20th century. That it continues to annoy the right people is wonderfully encouraging.

Latest column from Mr Cohen here.

Almost everyone discusses the second Iraq war in the passive voice. It’s as if a censor in the head clips out every mention of the crimes of Baathists and Islamists from their prose. So we read that an interpreter for the British army was assassinated; Iraqi Christians are the victims of a pogrom; British soldiers have been killed by roadside bombs.

Schoolchildren learn that they must always say who is doing what to whom. In the case of Iraq, many find it impossible to declare who is killing interpreters, Christians and soldiers, and why. Clear English might threaten preconceptions, and that would never do.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is proving a master of the evasive style. Returning from visiting Iraqi refugees in Syria last week, he declared: ‘Women in Christian communities were regularly forced to wear the hijab and were followed as they went to church.’

Yes, yes, Your Grace, but who is forcing and threatening them? He couldn’t speak plainly, because if he admitted that al-Qaeda in Iraq kill Arab Christians for being Christians, he would have to accept that their persecution isn’t the responsibility of Britain and America, but of the psychopathic adherents of theocratic ideology.

I suppose the Archbishop sees himself as a liberal, but Tories can be just as slippery. In his speech to the Conservative conference, David Cameron declared: ‘I think that if we have learnt anything over the last five years, it’s that you cannot drop a fully formed democracy out of an aeroplane at 40,000 feet.’ Almost without exception, the British servicemen and women who are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t RAF pilots sent on a preposterous mission by a Labour government to drop democracy like bombs. They are squaddies on the ground fighting totalitarian enemies in close combat. The leader of the opposition must read the press reports of their deaths - or have aides who can read them for him - but can no more acknowledge their sacrifice than the Archbishop can face up to the true nature of al-Qaeda. Denial makes better propaganda.

….

More on refugees here.

Of all the Iraqis seeking asylum in the UK, only about one in six is allowed to remain…

A right to travel and attend being upheld here.

Merkel says Mugabe has right to attend summit

Via Terry G

Vaclev Havel on Burma:

“It is not the innocent victims of repression who are losing their dignity, but rather the international community, whose failure to act means watching helplessly as the victims are consigned to their fate.”