National Party Moves Against MMP

Today's Sunday Star Times has a story saying the Mixed-member Proportional (MMP) voting system is in danger under National. They are promising a two-stage referendum, with the first referendum at the 2011 elections asking people if they want to keep MMP or not.

This is no surprise. The move to a genuine democracy left the National Party displaced from its previously favoured position under the First Past the Post voting system as New Zealand's largest minority party. Under that system, the Nats most often won 100% of the power despite other parties winning at times in excess of 60% of the vote.

The move to MMP brought a system of representation where all voters for significant parties are represented equally and that allowed voters who had previously never been able to elect anyone they wanted to be represented by parties other than the two major parties.

The campaign against MMP has been lead by the usual democracy-hating folks: wealthy, self-appointed elite right-wingers who can't win public support for their extreme and self-serving, faith-based policies. Graeme Hunt and Peter Shirtcliffe are top of the list of people who don't want you to have a vote that actually counts if you disagree with their vision of a New Zealand run by the elites who think know everything for the elites who think they know everything.

These people aren't interested in democracy or fairness. They want power and they are campaigning to take yours away and give it to themselves via a campaign to return to First Past the Post and 100% of the power for their political vehicle of choice: the National Party.

National is taking a risk here. Many who might vote for them later this year may be less keen to do so if they realise it may be the second-last time they will have any real choice at a general election. National has so far not made any attempt to make a case for a referendum. Every recent poll shows clear majority support for MMP. The attempt a few years back to trigger a citizens initiated referendum on MMP died an apathetic death. Of the 8 parties in the Parliament, only one wants a referendum on MMP: National.

In my 25 years in New Zealand, I've voted for pretty much every party going at one point or another. I was an activist for and voted for Bob Jone's New Zealand Party in 1984 partly because it was National who had allowed Muldoon to effectively become a dictator. They didn't lifta finger to stop him.

My vote means a lot to me and even more now that it actually counts toward representation under MMP. For me, effective democracy through fair representation underlies EVERY other issue in the political realm. Without it, citizens are collectively rendered impotent and irrelevant. New Zealand doesn't need the thinly-disguised crypto-fascism favoured by self-styled elitists like Hunt and Shirtcilffe. I don't know what else to call people who want to take my genuine vote away so they can get what they want.

National's obvious antipathy to effective democracy via MMP has for many years kept them on my list of non-starters. Looks like they have renewed the lease on their place on that list.