The election by the numbers
By Nelson Daily Editor
To the Editor:
Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, 1976 edition, describes “democracy” as “government by the people,” “rule by the majority,” “government in which supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation.”
On March 27, after 58 years in government, the Conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg lost power to a Green/Social Democrat majority coalition. CDU support dropped from 44.2 per cent to 39 per cent, roughly the same level as Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, and consequently the number of seats obtained by the party dropped from 50 per cent to 43.5 per cent.
In contrast the German Green Party received 24.1 per cent of the votes and 26 per cent of the seats, and the Social Democratic Party 23.1 per cent of the votes and 25.4 per cent of the seats.
Thus between them they received 47.2 per cent of the votes and 51.4 per cent of the seats — enough to form a majority coalition government. By comparison, in Canada Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, with 39.6 per cent of the vote, took 53.4 per cent of the seats, whereas the NDP, Liberal and Green Parties received 53.4 per cent of the votes but only 44.5 per cent of the seats.
Clearly Stephen Harper has no mandate from the electorate to govern and Canada is not a democracy when the party with a minority of support receives a majority of the seats.
In contrast in Germany the parties with the largest number of votes receive the largest number of seats and get to govern. That is how democracy should work.
When will the people of Canada and British Columbia wake up and demand that we have a democracy here?
Andy Shadrack, Kaslo
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