Wednesday, September 05, 2007
MMP's LACK OF INDEPENDECE
James Bow recently wrote a good post about impartiality and partisanship in contemporary government. The post focuses on former MP and Speaker of the House Lucien Lamoureux.
One of my favourite things about James's site is how unabashedly and conscientiously he promotes independence and non-partisanship in the blogosphere and politics generally. This is why I find it remarkable that James is also a supporter of altering Ontario's electoral system to a mixed-member-proportional model.
To my mind the MMP model can only harm the advancement of reasonable independent and non-partisan ideas in government. The MMP system will further incentivize voting for a party and a slate of collectively defined policies, rather than an individual and a set of independent principles. It will also further shift power from the individual MPP to corporate party structures.
Both our provincial and federal systems of government need some reform, however the reform should be focused on giving more power to our individual representatives rather than the executive and party bodies.
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The proposed system isn't perfect and, if it's passed, I'm going to work very hard to change it (it _is_ possible to elect independents in a modification of this system, and that's what I'll go for). But the proposed system is better, in my opinion, than the system we now have. If we wait for a perfect system, it will never arrive. The key to change is to focus at least as much on what will improve, as what flaws exist.
I'll explain more when I write a post detailing why I support MMP.