Neil Godbout's editorial in the Feb. 3 Citizen paints a good picture of the challenges facing Andrew Wilkinson now that he has won the BC Liberal leadership. Pouring salve on the bruised egos of the party faithful who were supporting someone other than him, reassuring those who favored a new approach that the old one is best, convincing soft right wing voters to follow along, etc.
One of his challenges will be how he can explain his, and his entire party's, opposition to a proportional representative style government while his party chose a PR system to decide their leader.
They somehow feel a provincial switch to a PR system would be the worst thing that could possibly happen to democracy in our province while at the same time embracing the concept as the fairest and best way to chose their new leader. He will need to hire some of the better spin doctors from south of the border to put a positive spin on that one.
Neil is also bang on when he states that adopting a PR system will not mean a major change in how politics works in B.C. Supporters of PR aren't looking for massive change - only a change to an electoral system that will give each party with candidates in the race roughly the same percentage of seats as the percentage of the popular vote they get. The present system does a very poor job of this so that in the majority of elections the winning party has far less than 50 per cent of the popular vote but elects far more than 50 per cent of the seats. Retaining that antiquated system has worked in the Liberals favor in the past so, despite it being not fair, they want to retain it.
But right wing voters should look at some hard, cold numbers before following, lemming like, the BC Liberals hierarchy in their opposition to proportional representation: 58 per cent, 46 per cent, 46 per cent, 44 per cent and 40 per cent. Those are the BC Liberals percentage of the popular vote over the last five elections.
It was a dead heat between the Liberals and the NDP this last go around. If the Liberals drop another couple of percentage points in the next election and/or if the NDP pick up a couple of percentage points under the current first past the post system we would probably have a strong majority NDP government.
But if the vote to bring in a PR system is successful, under the above scenario there would be 38 per cent of the seats for the liberals and 42 per cent for the NDP. Grassroots liberals should be asking should we take a chance on a 65 per cent/35 per cent NDP majority or wouldn't it be better if the split was 38 per cent to 42 per cent?
With a new leader and a slight shift to the left, a two per cent loss in popular vote is certainly not out of the question for the Liberals. And if the NDP play their cards right, and this guy Horgan seems to be a good poker player, a two per cent gain for the NDP is certainly possible.
The Liberals should be careful what they are asking for.
Neil's suggestion that eliminating party politics entirely is not even going to be on the table so just muddies the water. Making the minor move to a PR system from a first past the post system is going to be tough enough. It has failed to pass twice already. The only way it will pass is for a big turnout of grassroots voters who want to see a positive improvement in how politics works in our province. The big, well funded juggernaut that is the BC Liberals will be doing everything they can to see a switch defeated.
I have voted BC Liberals since their inception but feel they are way off base on this one and need to be told so. A system that sees 40 per cent of the popular vote elect 60 per cent of the seats giving them 100 per cent of the power is wrong and should be changed.
Thanks for the great editorial, Neil.
John Warner
Prince George
