[lbo-talk] German Left Party Emerges as Political Force

[Bill Bartlett]

Two or three elections ago there was an attempt to butcher the 
Tasmanian Hare-Clarke PR system for the same reason. The Greens were 
consistently getting sufficient electoral support that they had to be 
included in government. The major parties joined together to push 
through changes to the electoral system to reduce the number of MPs 
being returned in each of the electorates from 7 to 5 in each of the 
5 electorates. This has the effect of substantially increasing the 
number of votes needed to get someone elected.

It looked like it had worked at first. The Greens had been getting 
one candidate elected in each of the 5 electorates. After the change, 
they only managed to get a single candidate elected. But actually 
this was mainly due to a temporary slump in electoral support, they 
now have 4 out of the 25 parliamentarians in the lower house. Which 
is better than 5 out of 35 under the old system.

The real effect has been to greatly reduce the power and 
effectiveness of the parliament and especially the elected 
government. Since government ministers must be appointed from the 
ranks of those elected to parliament from the winning party, there is 
a greatly reduced field. At most 13 or 14 people from which to choose 
the entire government and Cabinet. Ministers must take on a much 
heavier workload. Even dud parliamentarians have to be given a share 
of responsibility. It means the public service and ministerial 
staffing has to be expanded and has to take on some of the workload.

Its been a disaster. Hasn't really weakened the Greens at all though, 
the only thing that has kept them out of government since, has been 
that one of the major parties has suffered an almost terminal 
electoral decline. The Liberal party is only just managing to keep 
ahead of the Greens in parliamentary representation, it has only 
slowly recovered from a dramatic loss of public support after it went 
to an election with a radical neo-conservative manifesto, selling off 
the state's hydro-electric system etc. That, on top of its 
simultaneously colluding with the Labor opposition to rig the 
electoral system, saw the Liberals almost wiped out at that election.

How are Germans likely to take any rigging of the electoral system by 
the existing parties?

Bill Bartlett
Bracknell Tas

At 12:09 PM -0800 24/2/08, Joanna wrote:


>Angelus Novus wrote
>>  Now there is open discussion of abolishing
>>  proportional election in Germany in favor of an
>>  American "winner take all" system, and it is openly
>>  stated that this is intended as a response to the
>>  success of Die Linke in the Hessen elections.
>>
>>  
>Can this be done by fiat? Or, will it require a popular vote?
>
>Joanna
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk