Coming from Germany, I wish! We have a 5% cutoff for representation, which means there’s realistically 4-5 parties that get into parliament, and all of them suck. We got the liberal Greens that sold their morals long ago, the social democrats whose greatest strength is blocking, delaying and betraying leftist causes, the christian democrats that have been copying Trump rhetoric for years, and finally the outright fascists. I’d love to be able to vote for some fringe leftist party knowing I’ll not waste my vote
I’d love to be able to vote for some fringe leftist party knowing I’ll not waste my vote
But in a way it will. Many of these fringe parties never have a chance to make it into the government and will forever be in the opposition, meaning their impact isn’t very big. The PVV started off like this as well and their leader, Geert Wilders, has only ever wanted to be the person shouting at stuff from the opposition side of the fence. Even now, when he has the biggest party, they had to come up with some wicked solution where he’s not the PM and not in the government itself. Instead, it’s a neutral PM with some ministers and everyone else is in the opposition and constantly criticising their own “government”. It’s ridiculous and so far they haven’t gotten much done.
In my opinion, a cutoff of 5% is a bit high but I also think that parties should have more than 1 seat to even make it into the chamber, otherwise it’ll turn into a mess real quick.
I honestly don’t mind many splintered parties in parliament. There’s always gonna be assholes whose only aim is to sabotage and fling shit, but they’re just going to join a bigger party under our system. Our (recently fired) finance Minister was like this, constantly publicly criticizing the government that he was a part of, and which he was actively blocking from getting shit done.
I actually think it would be better if there were no rigid factions either. But then again, my opinion of representative democracy isn’t too great anyways
Coming from Germany, I wish! We have a 5% cutoff for representation, which means there’s realistically 4-5 parties that get into parliament, and all of them suck. We got the liberal Greens that sold their morals long ago, the social democrats whose greatest strength is blocking, delaying and betraying leftist causes, the christian democrats that have been copying Trump rhetoric for years, and finally the outright fascists. I’d love to be able to vote for some fringe leftist party knowing I’ll not waste my vote
But in a way it will. Many of these fringe parties never have a chance to make it into the government and will forever be in the opposition, meaning their impact isn’t very big. The PVV started off like this as well and their leader, Geert Wilders, has only ever wanted to be the person shouting at stuff from the opposition side of the fence. Even now, when he has the biggest party, they had to come up with some wicked solution where he’s not the PM and not in the government itself. Instead, it’s a neutral PM with some ministers and everyone else is in the opposition and constantly criticising their own “government”. It’s ridiculous and so far they haven’t gotten much done.
In my opinion, a cutoff of 5% is a bit high but I also think that parties should have more than 1 seat to even make it into the chamber, otherwise it’ll turn into a mess real quick.
I honestly don’t mind many splintered parties in parliament. There’s always gonna be assholes whose only aim is to sabotage and fling shit, but they’re just going to join a bigger party under our system. Our (recently fired) finance Minister was like this, constantly publicly criticizing the government that he was a part of, and which he was actively blocking from getting shit done.
I actually think it would be better if there were no rigid factions either. But then again, my opinion of representative democracy isn’t too great anyways