26 August 2010

AEC PDF

Australia has been waiting since 21 August for the results of the federal election held that day.

The election resulted in a 'hung parliament', which means neither of the major parties was able to secure a majority of seats in parliament. Not dissimilar to what happened in the United Kingdom's last election, when Conservative leader David Cameron needed to form a coalition with Liberal-Democrat leader Nick Clegg (now Deputy Prime Minister) to have government, it is now down to a small group of Independent - and one Green - politicians who have won seats to be persuaded (or not) by either the Centre-Right (Liberal-National) or the Centre-Left (Labour) parties in Australia.I recently attempted to download an Electoral Enrolment form from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) website and got the message above. It seems an apt metaphor for this election as a whole and perhaps also for the state of supposed democracy at large - not only in Australia but globally. When so-called 'Western democracies' are getting indeterminate national election results, perhaps it's time to question what sort of 'democracy' we live in. When the choice of leadership is - at best - 'the lesser of two evils', I would have to ask whether we can call it democracy at all.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

coalition governments are the most democratic of their kind! wish canada would have had the balls to go that route...

31 August, 2010 19:05  

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