Wednesday, May 11

I'm starting to despair for the future of democracy in our world.  The philosophy sounds right: give the vote to everyone who is affected by the government and everything will be fine.  But, in reality, how is that working out?  In the UK, the people in their wisdom voted in an absolute boofhead to be Prime Minister, just this weekend, the people of the Philippines voted in as President the son of a notorious dictator who stole billions from the national coffers, and the US is tearing itself apart as tribalism takes over.  And the choice at their last election was between Donald Trump or a superannuated 78-year old.  I won't be surprised if there is a move by Southern states to break away from the federation.

Of course, I have a particular interest in the Philippines and I've had many conversations with people there about their political system and its weaknesses.  Our friends in Manila shrug their shoulders and acknowledge that votes are bought. A scrutineer will watch individuals go into the booth to vote, when he sees the tick has been put in the right place, he gives a thumbs-up to someone standing apart, the voter can then go and collect his reward of a few pesos.  It's blatant and rife.

The tragedy is that Marcos has probably used the money stolen by his parents to fund his successful bid for the presidency.  And nothing can be done about it.

It's not much better in Australia.  The incumbent government uses public money for bribes to voters.  It's more civilised and the bribes come in the form of grants for car parks and sports facilities.  I heard one well-dressed fellow on TV saying that he had looked at the policies of all the parties and decided the party which best fit his beliefs was the Liberal Party, "because they will give me a tax cut".  What a short-sighted, self-centred reason for selling your vote!

It's our taxes which pay for hospitals, the armed forces, the NDIS and so on.  It's short-sighted of a government to cut taxes to buy votes when those things still have to be funded and Clive Palmer and Gina Rinehart aren't going to help out. 

As an aside, I think Australia would benefit from a shake-up in our party system.  The Liberals have moved too far from the centre-right party of Robert Menzies and should more correctly be called Conservative.  The Labour Party suffers from its affiliation with the Union movement.  Neither of the parties represent me.  What we need is a left of centre Social-Democratic Party to take over from the ALP.  The Australian Democrats used to fill that role but, sadly, couldn't compete with the big money washing around the two incumbents.