The term “thief president” has sometimes been used for a U.S.
President who is elected to office on a majority of electoral
college votes but a minority of popular votes.
Australia now has a thief prime minister, ex-student
radical leader Julia Gillard, whose left-of-center Labor Party was
elected with a very decided minority of popular votes compared to
the opposition Liberal (i.e. Conservative) party, led by Tony
Abbott, but retains government with the support of two Independents
in the House of Representatives. It is an outcome that the framers
of the Australian Constitution and voting system never intended,
and a slap in the face for democracy and majority
government.
Gillard originally came to power by a coup within the
Labor Party that got rid of her predecessor, Kevin Rudd, whose
popularity had collapsed shortly after his election. Australia is a
long way from real political trouble, but the succession of events
is beginning to raise eyebrows among those Asian countries that
have always looked at it as a model of political regularity and
stability. The real responsibility for this, however, lies not only
with Gillard’s determination to cling to power but with two
independent Members of Parliament, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott,
who put an extension of their personal power ahead of
representative government.
Following the election, Australia was basically without an
effective government for 17 days while the Independents reveled in
their new-found importance. Finally these two stated that they
would support Gillard. Windsor actually explained they had sided
with her because Labor in government was less likely to call
another election. Why was Gillard less likely than Abbott to
go back to the polls? “Because I think [Abbott] would be more
likely to win.” Commentator Janet Albrechtsen
wrote:
Get it? Windsor admitted he sided with the party that had
less support from Australian voters. It’s a novel theory of
democracy, almost as brazen as Stalin’s theory that it’s not the
people who vote that count. It’s the people who count the
votes.
Politics does not get more elitist than what happened
yesterday. The Independents use fine rhetoric of grassroots
politics, respecting their constituents, supporting their
electorates, improving our democracy.
Windsor and Oakeshott revealed that Independents play raw
politics just as toxic as either of the political parties that
Independents like to scorn. Their game has been one of
self-interest clothed in the tricky language of stability and
longevity.
Backing the party less popular with voters does not
improve democracy. It diminishes and devalues democracy.
Actually, the Independents’ behavior can be seen as more
toxic than that of any major party: they have decoded, for the sake
of their own power, to keep a minority party in power simply
because it is a minority. Anything as quaint as beliefs or values
appear to have nothing to do with the case.
Windsor and Oakshott have suddenly found they are
important and wish to prolong the agreeable sensation. In the
previous Parliament Oakeshott voted in only one-third of the
divisions and Windsor voted in only-half: not an indication that
they actually take Parliamentary democracy very seriously in
ordinary circumstances.
Albrechtsen remarked: “Perhaps we should not be surprised
by the Independents’ patently undemocratic decision to side with
the party least likely to win the next election.”
Windsor and Oakeshott have, incidentally, not only defied
the wishes of a majority of the country’s voters but also the
wishes of what appears to be a heavy majority of the voters in
their own constituencies. Voters in both constituencies strongly
supported the formation of a non-Labor government. In Windsor’s
seat Labor polled only 8.1% of votes and in Oakeshott’s seat 13.5%.
Local reports quote a number of members of Windsor’s and
Oakeshott’s traditionally conservative electorates who claim to
have been betrayed.
Australia has had some fairly noisy elections in the past,
but they have always ended up with a result that more or less
reflected what a majority of the public wanted. It is one of the
oldest democracies in the world and its political history has been
one of the most decent and peaceful.
What it is confronted with now is a spectacle of blackmail
on a national scale by two members of Parliament unrepresentative
of any party, and a “thief” Prime Minister determined to cling to
power irrespective of the wishes of the majority of
electors.
The only democratic way to clear the air would be to call
another election but at the moment there is no way to force this.
Australia is left with a lame-duck government full of potential for
further instability. However radical Gillard’s personal agenda may
be, the government is likely to be very cautious, at least in the
obvious sense, although the Labor Party left in alliance with the
far-left Greens, which in some ways has an eerie resemblance to
Obama’s Democrats, is likely to try to get social legislation
through on euthanasia and related “moral” issues a good deal less
innocuous than it seems at first glance. There is also the
possibility of a so-called Bill of Rights which while sounding
innocuous enough will enforce political correctness by defining
“rights” in a very special way.
Australia will probably carry on, on the surface, much the
same as before with little change in foreign or domestic policies,
but at the very least its international image is
tarnished.
