Sure, there are winners and losers in an election, but that should be confined to politicians and parties. The people should never be vanquished. The public should never lose an election. Yet they routinely do.
That's especially true for what we in Canada endure today in our multi-party, first-past-the-post system where a party can garner scarcely 40 per cent support and yet receive a powerful majority. To "rule" with 40 per cent support and consider that some sort of mandate to do whatever you fucking well like is, frankly, despotic. It's the antithesis of democracy. When, as in the case of the current regime, that minority/majority was won on empty promises, it's that much worse.
Canadians have become accustomed to that. We acquiesce in it. They got 36 per cent, you got 38 and so you're the master of the universe until we get a chance to see our will defeated again in four years. Fuck That!
When governments do that, as so many of ours have, you're not just defeating your political opponent, you're defeating the public, the majority of the people. And, when the majority of the public lose to your false political majority, just what kind of government do we have? It's an illegitimate government whose power is cheap and thinly procedural at best.
What is a government that governs without the consent of its people? I don't know but I know we've had plenty of them. One thing it's not, it's not a liberal democracy. It's something else and that may vary depending on the whim of the ruler of the day.
That ruler, not leader but ruler, may be benevolent. That ruler may not be. Democracy becomes a matter of whim and that can ebb and flow markedly even during one term of power. We wind up with rulers, some less authoritarian, some much more. And that's the back door where special interests always insinuate themselves between the public and those elected to serve them. And, when that happens, the real losers from the election are the people. Somebody wins. The prevailing party and the special interests, their patrons. Somebody loses. The people, the nation.
That's why Canada needs electoral reform. We're no longer a two-party system which has come to guarantee that an election spells defeat for the majority of our people. That's obscene.
An election should never become a defeat for our people. Why do we continue to tolerate that?
Trudeau promised electoral reform. He got elected on that promise. He reneged. Ditch him.
