John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS
A critical piece about the behavior of the Doug Ford government in Ontario
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Response to a comment saying people vote for their local representative and not for the leader:
Yes, sort of.
That was the original concept of a parliament.
But read the news coverage, and it is clear that the general public and the press today think in terms of voting for the leader. In other words, parliamentary government has become Americanized, its elections resembling American presidential elections.
Individual members over time have been reduced to nonentities, too, with the dominance of powerful, well-financed political parties run under strict rules of discipline by the leader.
It's an awkward reality. Voters who want a leader often have to vote for an MPP they don't care for. And just the opposite, those who very much want to avoid a leader may have to vote against a well-liked MPP.
At any rate, voters can at least avoid votes which support atrocious leaders. It's not much, but it's something.
We badly need vote reform, serious reform, too. Justin Trudeau really let us down on that, although perhaps not any more than he has on a number of important matters.
But to my mind, the bottom line, as they say, is with the political parties doing a conscientious job in selecting leaders. They are badly failing us in that, time after time.
