FPTP produces false majorities

Dear Editor: With respect I would like to challenge much of what Jon Peter Christoff had to say in his letter of Aug. 22 on Pro-Rep.

It is true that we are often disappointed at the betrayal of promises made by politicians during campaigns. Our present firstpast-the-post system is highly susceptible to such hypocrisy because, once elected under those false majorities, politicians must then tow the party line under the lash of the party whip, promises be damned.

Under Pro-Rep there is no reason for whips. There is more declaration of intent to work toward certain policies by political candidates.

Pro-Rep is completely non-partisan, giving every party and person the power deserved by popular vote. Party power is subordinated to the power of compromise, making everybody a potential influencer.

With that moderating influence the costly and unstable policy lurches produced by FPTP are almost non-existent. That is why the old pendular swing of policies as new governments take the first two years of their mandate reversing all the policies of the old is so costly and unstable.

Under PR, policy decisions echo the spectrum of voters through their MLAs, producing much more durable legislation.

As to his concern that with PR we will fragment political power and lose majority governments, the Westminster-style of parliamentary democracy designed to function with only a two-party constituency has never been a true democracy where the value of every voter is equally represented. They only produce false majorities. And no matter the party, all false majorities are false. In fact they are minorities.

Indeed, in the much more complex world we live in now, and which will become increasingly complex as migration increases, false majorities representing a single ideology are completely incapable of producing full and fair representation. The combative approach so characteristic of FPTP must be replaced by the pragmatic, listening, consensual discussion of Pro-Rep. Ian MacKenzie

Kamloops