What ever happened to the old democracy I used to know

This one has taken me a while:
There has been a lot of talk about the electoral finance bill before parliament right now. Some of it good, some bad, most interesting and all have valid points. The single most harmonic point is the 'suppression' of human rights, especially during an election year.

I don't think too highly of most political parties. There are some people in the house who are just downright pointless to be blunt. I think 121 to be exact. Historically, I have been a Labour supporter. oh, hang on...under this act, I may be breaking the law for saying that...no that's right, we are still outside the 12 months.

Looking through parliaments select committee website I found 30 pages of submission links. Each page had 20 links to submissions. 30 x 20 = 600 submissions.

But I think we have to look a little deeper than that and perhaps blame ourselves for this problem. I personally think that the democracy we thought we had, does not and cannot really exist in an MMP environment, where parliament is not truly representative of the peoples choices.

For example, currently in our house of representatives, just over half of them are democratically elected. 69 of the 120 MP's in our house, we actually vote for. The rest, including Winston Peters, and his cohort, and all of the Greens are brought in on popularity, breaking through the 5% threshold to get given a spot in the house. That means there are 51 MP's who are there on other peoples coat tails rather than having actually earned a spot by winning an electorate. To me, that's not a democracy. 'The people' choose their elected representatives, not the party. We did this to ourselves in 1994 when MMP was brought in.

But years later, we are now seeing the fully fledged monster in the way in which legislation can be put through the house with wheeling and dealing. And yet, more arise, such as this electoral finance bill. This is one way to keep what is left of democracy, quite.

I do make one concession. Something needs to be there to prevent undue influence. However, I do not believe that anything needs to be in place to muzzle a voice that is in opposition to any government. Even, a private citizen will need to comply with some pretty strict rules in relation to this. Example? If I decided to run an election awareness message and not be aligned to a particular party, and my expenditure will need to be accounted for under the provisions of the bill as a third party.

Do we really realise that the only fully democratically elected party in parliament is perhaps one of the most extreme? The Maori Party. Personally, I do not agree with all of their policies, practices and beliefs, yet they represent, every one of them, an electorate. Tariana Turia represents Te Tai Hauaruru, Dr Pita Sharpels for Tamaki Makaurau, Hone Harawira for Te Tai Tokerau and Te Ururoa Flavell is in Waiariki. No other list MP's, just these four. Is not that democracy? Representing the people?

But it is a whale of a bill, 156 clauses. Its not plain english as legislation rarely is and there are things in it which are necessary. But many, which are not. There is a lot that protects the incumbent government from 'persecution of the masses' and little that really protects the integrity of the electoral process. Why do I say that? Three simple letters...MMP. At the last election the elected representatives of the National and Labour were only two apart, Labour with 50, National with 48. Either one, could have worked a deal with minor parties to form a government.

Is it fair representation? Maybe. Is it a parliament more representative of the people? Possibly. Is it more MP's than we need? Could be, but then some of those huge electorates could be split, and there's going to be at least one more Maori seat, (and that's a whole 'nother blog just there).

But to some degree, the events in Pakistan and Fiji do bear some resemblance. Musharif and Bananarama are or seem to be hiding behind laws. Our government seems to make them up when they are caught out.

I agree. Some controls need to be in place in order to ensure the people, those who don't have barrels of cash can speak. That's why I like what is happening now in the US. Right now, the candidates go around the country for two things. One, to win over their respective party's nomination vote. but they also go around the country to fund raise for the actual presidential race...they call it the primaries. They go around the country mostly targeting their own party faithful and convincing them that they are the best candidate to represent the Democrats or Republicans. Here, as I have said in previous blogs, I voted Labour last time for what seemed to be the lesser of two Evils, considering Brash was standing against Clark it didn't seem like to bad a choice. At the time...

I listened to some of question time this week from the house. Bill English asked some pretty plain questions of Labour, and the best Annette King could reply to his questions about people being prosecuted for going door to door, or holding placards during an election time was that the rule common sense would apply. I didn't know that we had legislated common sense to allow judges to interpret that into their judgements. Common sense would dictate that you do not put a convicted killer back onto the streets but it happens, and has happened more than once. Common sense would dictate that if a young driver has no intention of paying the fines on his car totalling more than $20,000 that he serves time, I've yet to see this happen. Common sense would dictate also that if a government does not listen to the people, they won't be getting the votes to hold power. That, is really, the only part of democracy we have left. Labour out, National in. (Hang on, this could constitute third party electioneering on my part).

However, this is something that is going to be the back breaker for a lot of long time supporters of Labour who, to use Annette King's phrase, "the rule of common sense" will apply to this election in 2008. Labour won't get back in. Stick a fork in them...they're done.

(You have to watch out for this one. In the last year, I predicted that we would lose every major sporting event we were going to be in, and so far, I'm not wrong, we lost the America's cup, Rugby World Cup, Cricket, and Netball).