Spain shows the joys of proportional representation: two elections in six months and still no government

Spain has just had its second election in six months, with no real change; the country remains in political deadlock; no party has enough seats to form a government, and no party can get enough support from the other parties to do anything. 

We can have political chaos like this in Canada, too. All we have to do is change our political system to some sort of proportional system. Let's hope we don't.

Coverage of the Spanish election here.

Poor Maryam Mounsef

Poor Maryam Mounsef. Her title is Democratic Reform Minister; her job is to explain away why the Liberals are acting anti-democratically. 

The Liberals want to change the way we vote and the only legitimate way of doing so is through a referendum. When Ontario, PEI and British Columbia wanted to change their voting systems, they put it to the people. When Britain and New Zealand wanted to do the same, they also held referendums. The reason is obvious: political parties get elected to govern, but the voting system itself is not theirs to change.

The Liberals know this. Everyone knows this. But although it’s obviously the only democratic thing to do, the Liberals cannot hold a referendum. Why? Because they’d lose. The polls say so, and the votes in Ontario, PEI and BC all went against changing the way we vote – in Ontario and PEI, massively so.

Trudeau himself says this is the reason he doesn’t want a referendum: “Many of the people who propose we need a referendum, well they know that the fact is that referendums are a pretty good way of not getting any electoral reform,” Trudeau recently said at the University of Ottawa.

Poor Maryam Mounsef. She is not allowed to be so blunt or so brief. She has to make actual speeches on the topic and answer repeated questions in the House. And she has to pretend it makes some sort of sense to change our voting system without a referendum.

The Liberals have consulted Canadians on twitter, she says. (I’m not making this up.) And they encourage Canadians to continue Tweeting them their opinions (tweet, tweet).

The Liberals will even hold town halls – so hundreds maybe even a few thousand Canadians can sound off on the topic. Not that the Liberals will be bound by what ordinary Canadians say.  Indeed, the well-understood purpose of town halls is to give the illusion of participation to people who are excluded from decision-making.

Will the Liberals allow 30+ million Canadians to actually determine this issue? No, no, no. That would be democratic. And the Liberals are against it.  

The Liberals are also against letting the other parties in the House of Commons influence this decision. After many months of hemming and hawing the Liberals at last created an ordinary Parliamentary Committee to guide the process – so much for the Liberal’s solemn promise to seek consensus of the issue. Because as with all Parliamentary Committees, the Liberals have a majority, so what the Liberal members of the committee decide is the way the committee goes.

What’s more, before the committee even meets, before a single town hall or even a single tweet, tweet, the Liberals have already decided the change they intend to force on Canadians: it’s called alternative voting or preferential ballot.

The way it works is that you mark the candidates in order of preference, and if no candidate wins at least 50% of the votes, then you start looking at second choices. So first choice NDP, second choice Liberals, or first choice Conservatives, second choice Liberals, third choice, I’ll hang myself.

From the Liberal perspective, this is the ideal system because it favours the party in the middle. From the point of view of the NDP, the Bloc and the Greens, this is the worst option, because over the long run, it tends to squeeze out minority parties.

For their part, the little parties prefer some sort of proportional voting system. Such systems ensure you never get majority governments, so small parties get to exercise power out of all proportion to their popularity.

Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives like proportional systems, in part because they dread the horse-trading of proportional systems, in which the government is forced to enact unpopular laws in order to satisfy the special interests represented by the little parties.

Even worse, under proportional systems parties fall apart. The social Conservatives will split from the fiscal Conservatives. The NDP radicals will split with the NDP pragmatists.

The party most threatened by a proportional system, though, is the Liberals. They’re likely to split between the old guard and the new, between the Quebec wing and the ROC, between the fiscally prudent Liberals and the spend, spend, spend Liberals. More than any other party in Canada, the Liberals are a big tent party. This has always been the party’s strength: that it’s a broad coalition of differing interests.

But in a proportional system, it makes no sense for a party to try to arrive at a broad consensus that will appeal to most Canadians. Why bother? Every politician with an ego and every special interest in the land can grab a few votes, elect a few candidates and get in on the horse-trading to cobble together enough MPs to form a government.

But poor Maryam Mounsef. Her job is to pretend the Liberals aren’t trying to re-arrange our voting system to their own advantage. The NDP suggested Parliament’s electoral reform committee be appointed according to the proportion of the popular vote they received – giving the Liberals just 4 out of 10 seats on the committee; instead of 6 out of 10.

But you can see what would happen: the committee would split 4 to 3 to 3, with the Liberals in favour of the alternative voting system, the Conservatives in favour of our current first past the post system, and the NDP and the Greens in favour of a proportional system.

The only way to break this deadlock would be to put it to the Canadian people in a referendum. In which case, whatever the result, the Canadian people would win. But again, the Liberals are against that.

Three-quarters of Canadians want a referendum before any change in our voting system

It's 2016. We've consulted Canadians by Twitter, says the Liberal Justice Minister. What more do you want?

A new poll conducted exclusively for Global News by Ipsos Public Affairs found 73 per cent of respondents “agree” the Liberals shouldn’t make any changes to the country’s voting system without a national referendum first. “There is a lot of public support for a [referendum], so you would have to have a pretty compelling reason not to have one,” said Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos.

But the only reason the Liberals don’t want a referendum is because they know they’d lose.

Demand a referendum before the government changes the way we vote

According to polls, about 62% of Canadians like our current voting system, as opposed to only 25% who dislike it. Canadians in favour our current system include two-thirds of Liberal supporters. Yet the Liberal government wants to get rid of the way we vote.

What’s with that?

I’m sure some in the government think changing our voting sytem would make our democracy stronger. On the other hand, the Liberals intend to replace our current system with a preferential ballot, which always favours parties in the middle … like the Liberals.

Perhaps it’s just human nature for Liberal politicians to confuse what’s good for democracy with what’s good for getting Liberals elected, but the other parties don’t have those particular blinkers which is why all of them – NDP and Conservatives, the Bloc and the Greens – oppose the change the Liberals want.

About 65% of Canadians believe that, if the Liberal government does pursue electoral reform, a referendum must be held – including 68% of Liberal supporters. Only 17% of Canadians think a simple vote in the House of Commons would be legitimate. Yet, this is how the Liberal government plans to change the way we vote.

Why?

Because the Liberal government knows they’d never win a referendum. Trudeau has said as much: “Many of the people who propose…we need a referendum, well they know that the fact is that referendums are a pretty good way of not getting any electoral reform,” Trudeau explained at an event at the University of Ottawa.

It seems Trudeau doesn’t understand that’s the whole idea of a democracy: if Canadians oppose electoral reform, it shouldn’t be forced on us. But as this seems to be a blind spot for our P.M., I urge everyone to sign this petition, demanding a referendum on any electoral change: http://www.jasonkenney.ca/demand_a_vote

Where does all that aid to Palestinians go? About 16% goes to funding terrorism

President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority celebrates with
convicted murderers released from Israeli prisons 

Where does all that aid to Palestinians go?

TZIPI HOTOVELY

Wall Street Journal Jan 24

Note: Canada spends about $27 million a year in aid to the Palestinian territories. The Palestinian Authority spends 16% of its budget supporting terrorists, so if Canadian aid went directly to the Palestinian Authority, $4 million of it would be spent on terrorism. However, Canada puts its money into to specific projects, mainly the development of a legal system to try to improve the rule of law in the Palestinian territories – an aim any thinking person can support. But of course any money spent by Canada in the Palestinian territories is money that the PA does not have to spend itself, allowing it to divert more money into terrorism. ~ Brian

+ + +

One often-cited key to peace between Israel and the Palestinians is economic development. To that end, there seems to be broad agreement about the importance of extending development aid to help the Palestinians build the physical and social infrastructure that will enable the emergence of a sustainable, prosperous society. But few have seriously questioned how much money is sent and how it is used.

Such assistance will only promote peace if it is spent to foster tolerance and coexistence. If it is used to strengthen intransigence it does more harm than good—and the more aid that comes in, the worse the outcome. This is exactly what has been transpiring over the past few decades. Large amounts of foreign aid to the Palestinians are spent to support terrorists and deepen hostility.

For years the most senior figures in the Palestinian Authority have supported, condoned and glorified terror. “Every drop of blood that has been spilled in Jerusalem,” President Mahmoud Abbas said last September on Palestinian television, “is holy blood as long as it was for Allah.” Countless Palestinian officials and state-run television have repeatedly hailed the murder of Jews.

This support for terrorism doesn’t end with hate speech. The Palestinian regime in Ramallah pays monthly stipends of between $400 and $3,500 to terrorists and their families, the latter of which is more than five times the average monthly salary of a Palestinian worker.

According to data from its budgetary reports, compiled in June 2014 by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the PA’s annual budget for supporting Palestinian terrorists was then roughly $75 million. That amounted to some 16% of the foreign donations the PA received annually. Overall in 2012 foreign aid made up about a quarter of the PA’s $3.1 billion budget. More recent figures are inaccessible since the Palestinian Authority is no longer transparent about the stipend transfers.

Embarrassed by public revelations of the misuse of the foreign aid, in August 2014 the Palestinian Authority passed the task of paying stipends to terrorists and their families to a fund managed by the Palestine Liberation Organization, also led by Mr. Abbas. Lest there be any doubt as to the purely cosmetic nature of the change, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah made assurances as recently as September 2015 that the PA will provide the “necessary assistance” to ensure these terror stipends.

This procedural ruse apparently calmed the consciences of donor governments that continue to transfer aid. It is difficult to think of another case in which such a forgiving attitude would be taken regarding foreign aid to an entity that sponsors terror.

This situation is particularly disturbing given the disproportionate share of development assistance the Palestinians receive, which comes at the expense of needy populations elsewhere. According to a report last year by Global Humanitarian Assistance, in 2013 the Palestinians received $793 million in international aid, second only to Syria. This amounts to $176 for each Palestinian, by far the highest per capita assistance in the world. Syria, where more than 250,000 people have been killed and 6.5 million refugees displaced since 2011, received only $106 per capita.

A closer look at the remaining eight countries in the top 10—Sudan, South Sudan, Jordan, Lebanon, Somalia, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo—is even more alarming. CIA Factbook data show that these countries have a combined population of 284 million and an average per capita GDP of $2,376. Yet they received an average of $15.30 per capita in development assistance in 2013. The Palestinians, by comparison, with a population of 4.5 million, have a per capita GDP of $4,900.

In other words, though the Palestinians are more than twice as wealthy on average than these eight countries, they receive more than 11 times as much foreign aid per person. The Democratic Republic of Congo is a case in point: Its 79 million people have a per capita GDP of $700, yet they receive only $5.70 in aid per person.

Between 1993 (when the Oslo Process began) and 2013, the Palestinians received $21.7 billion in development assistance, according to the World Bank. The Palestinian leadership has had ample opportunity to use these funds for economic and social development. Tragically, as seen in Hamas-run Gaza, it prefers to use the funds on its terrorist infrastructure and weaponry, such as cross-border attack tunnels and the thousands of missiles that have rained down in recent years on Israel.

In Judea and Samaria, the “West Bank,” the situation is equally disturbing. Aside from funding terrorists and investing in hate speech, the PA stubbornly refuses to remove hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from “refugee” rosters, deliberately keeping them in a state of dependence and underdevelopment for no purpose other than to stoke animosity toward Israel.

It is difficult to come away from these facts without realizing the deep connection between the huge amounts of foreign aid being spent, the bizarre international tolerance for patently unacceptable conduct by the Palestinians and the lack of progress toward peace on the ground.

Donors to the Palestinians who support peace would do well to rethink the way they extend assistance. Money should go to economic and civic empowerment, not to perpetuate a false sense of victimhood and unconditional entitlement. It should foster values of tolerance and nonviolence, not the glorification and financing of terrorism.

Ms. Hotovely is the deputy foreign minister of Israel.

Canada is the most tolerant country in the world

A new ranking has named Canada as being the most tolerant country on earth.

Canada also stood out this year for being the “freest country in the world” with its tolerance of immigrants, minorities, freedom of expression and beliefs.

In fact, an overwhelming percentage of Canadians -- 92 per cent -- agreed that their country is a good place for immigrants, and another 94 per cent said they believe that they have the freedom to choose the course of their own lives.

More here.

Earlier this year, Canada was ranked as the most admired country in the world, with the best reputation - for the fourth time in five years ... here.

Of course, this isn’t really news. Canada consistently ranks at or near the top in every international ranking going. Something I’ve commented on in the past here.

The Palestinian Children's Intifada ~ why does a child become a terrorist?

A soccer tournament was named after
 Palestinian child terrorist Muhannad Halabi. Photo: Facebook.

What makes a 14- or 15-year old Palestinian kid become a terrorist? In part, the answer is obvious: they’re told from birth that killing Jews is the highest honor any Palestinian can aspire to. So these children murder for glory. And usually end up dead themselves.

But criminologist Anat Berko, who has interviewed dozens of terorists for hundreds of hours, has additional insight. Theses young terrorists know when carrying out their attacks they're likely to be killed, but if so, they believe they'll go to paradise. And in paradise, they’ll get everything denied to them in life. 

Many young Palestinians live in communities with a tremendous amount of social pressure, prohibitions and shame, says Berko. In paradise, they can experience all the things that are forbidden in real life.

In paradise, “they will meet 72 virgins, drink until they’re intoxicated and have lots of sex.”

As for what female attackers can hope to get in paradise, it is often as basic as the right to marry for love. One prisoner, who tried but failed to carry out a suicide bombing, told Berko, “In paradise I will be like a queen and sit in my kingdom and marry anyone I want to. I want someone who is handsome [giggling], and Allah will receive me.”

Many of the terrorists Berko interviewed did not come from poor families, but they did suffer from violence at home.

For instance, a woman she interviewed who had tried to stab an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint related: “My brother is twenty-five; he rapes me and doesn’t want me to tell anyone. I’m twenty-three. My father died four years ago. I told my mother and uncle about my brother, and my uncle hit me and said my brother hadn’t raped me. My brother said he hadn’t done anything. I asked them to take me to a doctor. I went to the Palestinian police and a policeman said, ‘I can help you, but your brother is a friend of mine.’ He wanted to have sex with me, and he said, ‘Your brother won’t know.’”

In paradise, a young woman can escape being raped by her brother and hit by her uncle, can marry for love, and be remembered as a hero. If she kills enough Israelis, she may have a soccer team named after her or a summer camp or a school.

During the current children’s intifada, a 13-year-old has already had a soccer tournament and a street named in his honour and the Palestinian Bar Association awarded him a posthumous law degree (here).

You can read more about how the Palestinian leadership has been teaching kids to become terrorists in this piece I wrote for the Jewish Tribune seven years ago: here.

Read the entire article about Anat Berko on the motivation of young terrorists here: http://www.timesofisrael.com/a-portrait-of-the-terrorist-as-a-young-man-or-woman/

Cambridge Professor boycotts 13-year-old girl

Shachar Rabinovitz on her horse

The purpose of the so-called Boycott Divestment and Sanctions is to cut Jewish Israelis off from the rest of humanity. They give the movement a political colouring, but at heart, their rallying cry is that Jews are monsters.

Bizarrely, there are actually a few Jews involved. But they’re tactical Jews; that is, their parents or grandparents were Jews and they’ve decided to re-adopt their ancestry because they think it gives them a propaganda edge. Or sadly because the only way they can find to be Jewish is by becoming sort of anti-Jews. ~ Brian

A 13 year-old Jewish Israeli girl was turned down by a former Cambridge professor after she reached out for help on a school assignment on horses.

Shachar Rabinovitz sent an email to Dr. Marsha Levine, a professor who is an expert on the history of the domestication of horses but instead of receiving the help she thought she would get, she was instead turned down because "the Jews have become Nazis."

Shamir Rabinovitz, her mother, posted the exchange on her Facebook account, in shock over what happened.

Instead of receiving answers to her questions, Dr. Levine, who is an expert on the history of domesticating horses and spent 10 years at Cambridge's McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research as a fellow then senior research associate wrote that she would be unable to help her until there would be "peace and justice for Palestinians in Palestine" and was told that she should instead check out her organization website to educate herself on the Palestiniancause.

"I am a member of Jews for Justice for Palestinians. I support Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions. You might be a child, but if you are old enough to write to me, you are old enough to learn about Israeli history and how it has impacted on the lives of Palestinian people," Levine continued on to say.

According to the Jewish Chronicle, Levine was not embarrassed by her words and that it was "fair" not to help the teenage girl.

"I made the decision that I have the choice not to waste my time on people who tread on the rights of other people. I didn’t do anything to her. I said that when there is justice for Palestine I will answer her – that’s a fair answer. I’m a signatory to Jews for Justice for Palestinians and I sent her a link. I did it as a matter of conscience. The way Israel treats Palestinians is totally disgusting.

"Benjamin Netanyahu wants ethnic cleansing. The Jews have become the Nazis. Jews are behaving just like the people who treated them, " Levine continued on to say adding that due to their treatment of Palestinians in Gaza, Jews had "turned themselves into monsters."

“She’s a kid, not someone involved in politics,” says the girl’s mother. “She’s not responsible for bad things that happen around her — she’s not the Prime Minister.”

Arab journalist Lucy Aharish calls out Palestinian leadership

The current "Intifadah of knives" should be called the Palestinian Children's Crusade. The Palestinian leadership, both in the Palestinian Territories and among the Arab political parties in Israel, have been calling on teenagers ~ children ~ to murder people and to get themselves killed in the process.

The whole situation is so insane as to be almost beyond belief. The issue arises from a long-standing concession toward the intolerance of the Arab leadership ~ that only Muslims can be allowed to pray on the Temple Mount aka the Noble Sanctuary; and Jews especially cannot pray there. To keep the peace, this concession toward bigotry has been in place since Israel took control of Jerusalem in 1967. 

Now the Arab leadership, including supposed moderates, have been whipping up Jew-hatred and screaming that the Jews are trying to change the status quo, and want to actually pray on the Temple Mount. That's the immediate cause of the current horrors

There’s no way of telling how many Palestinians support sacrificing their children in order to murder Jews. But a few at least have spoken out against it, including Israeli Arab journalist Lucy Aharish, who’s called out the Arab leadership on this issue.

Just Say No by Brian Henry

This is an op-ed I wrote for The Toronto Star when Ontario was having a referendum about changing our voting system. In Canada’s current federal election, it’s once again become relevant, as two of the parties say, if elected, they’ll change our voting system.

On October 10, Ontario will vote on whether to switch the way we elect our government to a scheme called Mixed Member Proportional (MMP).  The system is deliriously complicated but suffice it to say that MMP is a form of proportional representation and thus shares PR’s usual faults.

Like all proportional systems, MMP is meant to guarantee that a single party can’t form a majority government.  Consequently, we may have elections once a year as they do in Italy. 

Alternatively, we may get reasonably stable governments, as the party winning the largest number of seats forms a coalition with one or more parties on the edges of the political spectrum – the NDP, the Greens, and other fringe parties that would emerge and win seats in a proportional system.

MMP salesmen will tell you it’s only fair to give greater clout to parties that the vast majority reject.  I can’t see the logic. 

In a typical Ontario election, more than 80% of us vote for either the centre left party (the Liberals) or the centre-right party (the Progressive Conservatives).  Then one forms the government, and the other forms the opposition, while the NDP takes about 15%, leaving 4% to the Greens and other fringe parties.

It might be more fair – that is, it might better reflect the will of the large majority – if we could have a blend of the two centre parties.  But that won’t happen. 

To join a government coalition, the second largest party would need to relinquish its role as the government in waiting.  It’s much better for them to wait for us to throw out the party in power and then step forward as the reasonable alternative.

The opposition won’t give up that opportunity.  Nor should they.  A strong opposition helps keep the government honest.  A government that faces no credible opposition does what it likes without fear of being voted out of power.

So the best MMP has to offer are unstable governments or coalitions composed of a centre party and a fringe party or two that the large majority of voters have rejected.

The worst MMP offers is a splintering of the party system as every politician with an ego and every demagogue with a grievance forms his own party. 

Unlike most places in Europe where proportional systems are common, Ontario doesn’t have any racist or xenophobic parties.  Why?  Because we’re tolerant people.  There isn’t a riding in the province where an extremist could come in fourth place, let alone win.

But under proportional representation, the extremists don’t have to be concentrated in one riding.  In the MMP system, a party gets votes from across the province, and with just 3% of the vote a party would win four seats and instant respectability – regardless of how vile their policies might be.  

According to an Association for Canadian Studies (ACS) survey released September 11, 12% of Canadians don’t like Jews.  This is better than most places in the world, especially as only 4% have a “very unfavourable” opinion of Jews.  But even 4% is over the threshold a party would need to gain seats under the MMP system.

Other groups would be even more vulnerable.  The ACS study found 16% of Canadians don’t like Sikhs and 18% don’t like Muslims. (In each case 9% hold a “very unfavourable” opinion of these groups.)

Under our current electoral system, no party represents the bigots.  Under MMP it will be only a matter of time before a party emerges to fill this vacuum.  And a few years down the road when seven or eight parties are winning seats in the legislature, a party on the centre left or centre right, desperate to cobble together a stable coalition, might well invite some extremist party to join the government. 

We could end up with a Citizenship Minister who flat out doesn’t like immigrants or an Aboriginal Affairs minister who doesn’t like native people – anything at all is possible. 

And that’s the main point.  We have an electoral system that works just fine.  The proposal is to break it and see what happens. It’s sheer foolishness.  On October 10, vote no.

Brian Henry is a writer and editor living in Toronto. He frequently contributes to the Jewish Tribune.

Note: The referendum was massively defeated, with 102 out of 107 ridings voting against changing the way we vote. To read my comments on the debate (or lack of debate) on changing the voting system in the 2015 federal election, see here. 

Palestinian Jew-hatred leads to horror in Jerusalem

Israeli PM Netanyahu visits Adele Banita and her toddler in the hospital.
Photo by Kobi Gideon in Jerusalem Post

On Saturday night, Oct 3, a Palestinian, Muhannad Halabi, attacked a family as they walked in the old city, killing the father, seriously wounding the mother and injuring their 2-year-old toddler before proceeding to stab to death man another Israeli man who tried to stop the attack.

Adele Banita, whose husband Aharon was killed and her 2-year-old child wounded in that attack, described the horrific assault.

She told Israeli media that she felt something in her back and then saw the Palestinian assailant stabbing her husband before turning round to stab her again. “There were lots of Arabs around looking ... laughing and smiling,” she said.

After she tried to help her husband she said she ran for help. Palestinian onlookers “spat at me and slapped me in the face. While the knife was still stuck in me they slapped me and laughed at me.”

Baby-faced terrorist

She said she pleaded with them to help her 2-year-old child and was told by the onlookers to “die.”

Security forces were able to shoot the terrorist.

Hours later, A Palestinian teenager stabbed and moderately wounded a 15-year-old Israeli early Sunday morning in Jerusalem before being shot dead by an Israeli officer. Relatives identified the teen as Fadi Alloun, 19. A day earlier he wrote on his Facebook page: “Either martyrdom or victory.”

The Palestinian Authority has not condemned these terror attacks. On the the contrary, it’s condemned Israel for killing the terrorists.  (More here.)

The stabbings were the latest in a series of deadly Palestinian attacks. On Thursday, Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli couple in front of their children as they drove in the West Bank.

An Israeli died when his car was pelted with stones last month and there have been numerous incidents of Palestinians attacking Israelis and throwing stones at passing vehicles.

These attacks have been encouraged by the Palestinian leadership – including the supposedly moderate Chairman Abbas of the Palestinian Authority.  

"The Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is ours,” Abbas said. “And they [the Jews] have no right to defile it with their filthy feet. We will not allow them to, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem."

In his speech, parts of which were broadcast on official PA TV and posted on his personal website, Abbas also glorified Palestinians fighting against Israel in Jerusalem who are killed in the fighting. Abbas promised that Allah will reward those who will not allow Jews to defile Jerusalem:

"We bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah, Allah willing. Every Martyr (Shahid) will reach Paradise, and everyone wounded will be rewarded by Allah."

More on Palestinian media watch here.