According to the article, they want "to move Italy away from decades of political instability" and "put pressure on politicians to produce a new electoral law that reinforces a two-party system and reduces the power of smaller parties".

See: president bush vetoing his head off recently

quote:

---

Originally posted by sgauvreau:
They should take a good hard look at the U.S. before they insist on a 2 party system. It's incredibly undemocratic and often leaves the opposition party with little to no power.

---

But the U.S. is a FPTP system, and nobody wants FPTP anymore. 81 countries have fair voting, except the last three or four western, most politically conservative nations. PaleoConservatives in the States have had to resort to stealing even FPTP elections, they suck that bad.

New Zealand now has PR and that's nice, but i don't think that anyone can seriously argue that they more progressive government as a direct result of that.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:
New Zealand now has PR and that's nice, but i don't think that anyone can seriously argue that they more progressive government as a direct result of that.

Ireland has a form of PR and has the weakest "Left" of any country in the western world.

---

Both of those countries are quite a lot further to the left than either Canada or the U.S., the last bastions of political conservatism in the western world. U.S. paleocons had to steal an election in 2000, and that was with an outdated electoral system.

And Canada's conservatives have been very anemic in the polls since Mulroney. The plutocracy found refuge in the Liberal Party, and now Canadians are fed up with that rotten bag 'o rutabagas, too.

There are significant real differences between oppressive political conservatism here in Canada and labour governments you've pointed out among 81 proportional democracies in all. Ireland has freely accessable post-secondary education, and New Zealand has interest-free, study now-pay later student loans for graduates remaining in the country. Canadian students are being gouged with stupidly high interest rates on student loans.

Access to higher education is a key ingredient for any democracy. Democracy requires a well-informed public. Financial barriers to higher education in North America of the last 15 years amounts to censorship and dumbing-down the population. And if anyone wants to post college and university attainment levels for world comparison, why not go one further and explain what percentage of degreed and college educated Canadians graduated before the Liberals defunded post-secondary to the tune of several billion dollars a year.

After two and half decades of old line party rule, Canada has become even more conservative than paleoconservative USA in several key social and economic aspects that include central bank money policies through to gutting of our social programs since the 1980s and 90s.

Here in Canada, we have burgeoning "financial services" sector, a smaller and increasingly foreign-owned and controlled manufacturing sector along with 35 other important economic sectors majority foreign owned, big banking, big natural resource giveaways to big business, and lots of tax "incentives" for friends of our two old line parties.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:
I provided about 7 different ways in which Ireland lags behind Canada and you find 1 way in which Ireland MIGHT be more progressive - though countries with supposedly free post-secondary education usually have much smaller proportions of their populations attending those institutions.

---

Access to post-secondary education is a biggy, and North American countries used to provide reasonably accessable, affordable PSE. The U.S. and Canada didn't get to where we are today with laissez-faire capitalism. But it hasn't stopped them from trying it on again here and in several other countries since los Chicago boys were fired off the job in 1985 Chile.

And if you look very hard at the issue of PSE attainment rates in Northern Europe and Scandinavia, you'll discover that not only is PSE freely accessable in several left-leaning countries with proportional democracy, you might also realize that men and women can live on a waiter or waitress' wages. That's not true in North America, and so workers in those countries are not condemned to a life of low wage McServitude for not diving headlong into ten or 20 years worth of student loan debt sentence, or worse if they are one of the thousands denied student loans every year. It's all about choices, and Canadians don't have much of a choice without attaining some level of post-secondary education.

Countries with varying degrees of socialized medicine Note that the most politically conservative nation in the world, and still feigning democracy with FPTP, is surrounded by universal health care and better mortality rates the developed world over.

quote:

---

BTW: Ireland also attracted a lot of foreign investment by positioning itself as a tax shelter where the wealthy from all over Europe could hide their money. Is that what you call being "leftwing"???

---

Why didn't the big wheels invest in long-time bastions of real conservative right-wing ideology - countries where only sons and daughters of the well-heeled are well-fed, well-read and bred ?. Because there are several to choose from. Ireland has a well-educated and trained high tech workforce today, and it's not down to politically conservative ideology. Stacks and stacks of money sitting in a bank or federal issue bonds does nothing all by itself. The money has to be used wisely. The Irish chose wisely.

Meanwhile, we're short of every skilled trade from family physicians and medical technologists to plumbers and school teachers in this NPR at the same time Canada's two largest provinces are mired in manufacturing recession since December and piddling growth rates expected for the next few years.

And Canada has neither affordable/accessable PSE or fair voting. What we do have is NAFTA and massive exports of our valuable fossil fuels and raw materials to the U.S. since Brian Baloney, Jean Chretien and their phony-baloney majority governments.

ETA: The abortion issue is a cultural-religious thing in Ireland. They aren't about to give up their Catholicness for a bowl of soup in a Protestant church anytime soon. Wherever PR exists as a general rule, political conservatives and conservative Liberal's agendas tend to be de-fanged compared to the plutocrats wrt their iilustrious history of phony majorities, and what are very similar political agendas between the two old line autocratic parties in taking voters for granted here in North America.

[ 25 July 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

And Ireland's relative conservatism is not due to its non-FPTP electoral system(as Canada's relative domestic progressivism is not the result OF FPTP).
It is the result of other factors, which include the excessive political dominance, until very recently, of the Catholic Church, the lack of resolution on the Ulster situation, and the predominately rural population of the Republic.

Had Ireland been a unified 32 county state all this time, it would have had a far stronger left, as the natural base of a left party would have been in the Six Counties, the island's historic industrial heartland.

So no, PR is not to blame.
And the chance of an eventual majority leftwing Canadian government elected with less than 50% of the vote is not worth having to tolerate decades of false right-wing majority in the intervening years.

Italy had PR for almost 50 years and all it got them was 50 straight years of extremely corrupt Christian Democrat dominated government that did the Vatican's bidding.

Germany had 16 straight years of a rightwing Christian Democrat/Free Democrat government under Helmut Kohl that welcomed the deploying of neutron bombs on German soil.

Poland has PR and their government right now is totally reactionary.

I support PR because i think it is a more fair system that will give us a parliament that is more representative of the range of political views in Canada.

I believe one of the reasons for higher voter participation rates in Scandinavia and N. Europe is that people there realize there is something at stake. They show up at the polls in order to defend their social programs from politically conservative agendas.

After the free trade betrayals and worst aggregate economic performances in Canada since the 1930's, Canadian voter turnouts in federal elections dropped siginficantly over the decade of the 90's. A large number of Canadians were jaded by phony majority governments, and many Canadians didn't fully understand why democracy had failed us.

quote:

---

I believe one of the reasons for higher voter participation rates in Scandinavia and N. Europe is that people there realize there is something at stake. They show up at the polls in order to defend their social programs from politically conservative agendas.

---

I guess that explains why last year Swedish voters gave a solid majority to a rightwing coalition that ran on a platform of cuts to social spending and lower taxes etc...

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:

In Canada, you don't pay one red cent to see a doctor and we have a single tier public system. In Sweden you have to pay user fees to see a doctor that their is a whole parallel private system of health care for the rich.

---

But that has nothing to do with the electoral system. And you can't seriously be arguing that Sweden would be further left if it had FPTP, can you?

Why be loyal to a system that is almost always biased towards the rich?

PR is not an end in itself. But you know as well as we do that Canada will never have a left government without it. With FPTP, Canada is doomed to the Family Compact for the rest of eternity. Saskatchewan was a fluke that can't be replicated nationally.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:

[quote]
Italy had PR for almost 50 years and all it got them was 50 straight years of extremely corrupt Christian Democrat dominated government that did the Vatican's bidding.

---

This was due to the Cold War, the ineffectual and obsessively anti-left Italian Socialist and Social Democratic parties, and the inability of the Italian Communists to convince voters they were truly independent of the Soviet Union(the last of which was, of course, abetted by incessant anticommunist homilies in every Italian Catholic parish during every election campaign). It would have been worse without PR.
Then, the Christian Democrats would have had a permanent majority on their own and would have cut social benefits completely down to nothing.

quote:

---

Germany had 16 straight years of a rightwing Christian Democrat/Free Democrat government under Helmut Kohl that welcomed the deploying of neutron bombs on German soil.

---

PR prevented the CDU from having an outright majority, which stopped Helmet Kohl from making the kind of Thatcherite cuts to social welfare he wanted to make. PR kept things from getting worse. The real problem in Germany was the SDP's refusal to embrace the Greens and work out a clear radical program until the Greens moved hard to the right and a common program no longer mattered.

quote:

---

Poland has PR and their government right now is totally reactionary.

---

Which would be more reactionary WITHOUT PR.

quote:

---

If you want PR because you think it will cause an electoral outcome that you favour - you may be in for a big disappointment.

---

We all want PR for legitimate reasons. It's just as legitimate to want it in the hopes of more progressive government as it is to want it in the name of sanctimoniously proclaiming one's democratic purity. For the record, I'd welcome it for both reasons.

Meanwhile, our politicos have pushed for P3's and now the backdoor privatization equivalent by the Liberals in Ontariario, AFP's.

Stockholm, let's have PR so we can be as politically conservative as Sweden and be plowing a third of Canada's GDP back into social spending in tune with that country. The only way Canada will share a top ten most competitive economy rating with Scandinavia and N. European countries is if we push and prod our colonial administrators for fair voting.

"All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door" -- Galbraith

[ 26 July 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

In Germany, one worker is all it takes to certify the workplace. Germany is a rich country with what is probably the most skilled workforce in the world exporting over $900 billion dollars USD worth of goods and services every year - and without similar pre-existing natural resource wealth advantage held by Canada.

Since 1982, Canadian governments have enacted 175 repressive pieces of labour legislation while we've shipped massive-enormous amounts of fossil fuels, timber and hydro-electric power south without so much as a green tax. And even though we don't have advanced democracy, the UN still chides Canada for our appalling rates of child poverty after ten years of progress made toward virtual elimination of the problem in other rich countries.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:
I'm not sure what your point is about Helmut Kohl and the CDU being constrained by not having a majority.

---

The same can be said of NZ and Scotland. Instead of crushing labour party victories under FPTP, the left is now forced to win by coalition, which is vastly more probable in those countries than here.

Canada's economy has been propped up by unparalleled natural resource wealth for several decades. And now with growing global concerns for the environment, our lack of economic versatility is showing. The two old line parties were fresh out of ideas 30 years ago. It was time for change even before then.

And where are Helmut Kohl and Karl Heinz-Schreiber today ?.

[ 26 July 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

In Italy, the only reason that the leftwing Olive Tree coalition was ever able to form Italy's first ever leftwing government in the 90s was that Italy went the opposite way and scrapped their former PR system which gave the right a total stranglehold on power and instead brought in a form of FPTP that finally allowed the left to win.

Ultimately, if a majority of Canadians wanted a socialist government then all it would take would be for about 40% of Canadians to vote NDP in our FPTP system and we would have an NDP majority government freed from having to make compromises with any of the rightwing parties.

PR would be nice and i will support it - but ultimately, you win power by convincing more people to vote for you, NOT by dicking around with the electoral system.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:
Ultimately, if a majority of Canadians wanted a socialist government then all it would take would be for about 40% of Canadians to vote NDP in our FPTP system and we would have an NDP majority government freed from having to make compromises with any of the rightwing parties.

---

And their role in the 80's was to limit the cuts in social services that the CDU was able to implement.

[ 26 July 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

Nowadays, the FDP is the "Thatcherite" party in Germany that wants massive privatization and cuts in social spending etc...

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:
The Netherlands in the 80s and early 90s had a succession of Christian Democrat/Liberal governments that brought in such savage cuts that even Margaret Thatcher marvelled that they were able to get away with so much more than she was ever able to do while heading up a Conservative majority government in the UK!

---

I'm not sure what the situation is today. But in 2003, Mel Hurtig's research said that if Canada was to collect tax revenue at just the OECD average as a percentage of GDP, Ottawa would have been raking in another $29 billion dollars a year. And if Ottawa was to spend on social programs at the OECD average, again as a percentage of GDP, they'd have been spending about $47 billion dollars more. Few developed countries were as far to the right as our phony majority Liberals were in the 1990's.

Again, those countries don't enjoy nearly the same natural resource advantage that Canada does. Canada's reliance on exporting of energy is said to resemble a developing economy moreso than a true G8. Our economy is outdated, politicians are corrupt, and it's time we caught up with the state of democracy in more economically competitive nations.

[ 27 July 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:
Just think with PR, Canada could have a grand coalition of the Liberal and Conservative parties in perpetuity...

---

That's exactly what we've had for more than ten decades in a row in Ottawa as it is. You must try harder.

[ 27 July 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

We are looking for a recipe for DEMOCRATIC government.

I do not believe that the NDP will ever be able to achieve anything with a 39% "majority" government, a la Bob Rae. Such a government has no additional levers of power, and quickly becomes isolated as it is attacked by the press and calumnied by the wealthy.

Only a very broad mandate will allow the NDP, or any other progressive party, to made progressive changes that will last.

[ 27 July 2007: Message edited by: jeff house ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:
Just think with PR, Canada could have a grand coalition of the Liberal and Conservative parties in perpetuity with the NDP and BQ sitting in opposition.

---

The voters disagreed. The Scottish National Party just took power in a minority parliament with the acquiesence of the Liberals and Conservatives, who preferred them to perpetual Labour.