E-News Archives
International Update
October 1, 1996
Greetings,
Most of the folks on this list are on our education committee. Ed Still just forwarded
me a few articles he pulled off the recent news wire on proportional representation --
much talk of PR in the France and the UK now, and growing interest elsewhere....
Some excerpts:
PARIS, Sept 21 (Reuter) - Leaders of the French Left will meet next Thursday to work on
a strategy for tackling an increasingly vocal far-right National Front, Socialist Party
leader Lionel Jospin said on Saturday....
... Jospin said he favoured plans floated by Juppe earlier this month to introduce an
element of proportional representation into the current first-past-the-post voting system.
Such a reform would open the doors of the National Assembly to the National Front which
does not have any seat now. The next general election is scheduled in 1998.
* * *
Sb: PA 09/26 1621
LIB DEMS SET PRICE FOR DEAL WITH LABOUR
By Gavin Cordon and Alison Little, Political Staff, PA News
Tony Blair must accept the principle of electoral reform if he wants to secure the
backing of Paddy Ashdown's party in government, senior Liberal Democrat Baroness Williams
warned today.
Lady Williams, the former Labour Cabinet minister who co-founded the SDP, effectively
spelled out her party's terms for co-operation with a Labour government, in her address to
the final session of the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton.
At the end of a week dominated by speculation about a future Lib Dem-Lab pact, she said
Mr Blair would have to accept key Liberal Democrat policies on proportional
representation, education, cutting unemployment and Europe. ...
[APPARENTLY LABOR REAFFIRMED SUPPORT FOR A REFERENDUM THIS WEEK AT ITS CONFERENCE....]
* * *
Sb: PA 09/25 1854
LIB DEMS UNVEIL CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM BILL
By Alison Little, Political Correspondent, PA News
Liberal Democrat president Robert Maclennan tonight unveiled a package of legislation
he believes could effect comprehensive constitutional reform.
Mr Maclennan is to send a copy of the proposed Reform Bill, to enact his party's
"constitutional declaration", to other parties for their consideration.
The package, backed by the party conference in Brighton yesterday, includes proposals
to transfer the Queen's powers to dissolve Parliament, appoint a Prime Minister and ratify
international treaties to the House of Commons.
Under sweeping reforms of the Commons and the system of government, MPs would be
elected by proportional representation, their numbers would be cut from 651 to 450 and
they would be given greater powers in a fixed-term Parliament.
Other proposals include introducing a written constitution enshrining human rights,
turning the House of Lords into an elected chamber and reducing its membership from 1,200
to about 300, and spreading home rule.
* * *
By Patricia Reaney
LLANDUDNO, Wales, Sept 25 (Reuter) - With just 2.5 million people in a land roughly a
quarter the size of Austria, Wales would be one of the smallest members of the European
Union.
But size and population notwithstanding, Dafydd Wigley and his Welsh nationalist party
Plaid Cymru are pushing for an independent Wales early in the next millennium.
Fed up with 17 years of unbroken Conservative government in London and with an election
due in less than eight months, nationalism in the principality is growing and Plaid Cymru
says the time is ripe for radical change.
"We're fighting to give the people of Wales a real choice," said
Wigley, the
party's president, in a rousing speech to its annual conference in the resort of
Llandudno.
But before Wales can take a seat at the U.N. General Assembly or have a direct voice in
Brussels it must cut the ties that have bound it to England since the act of union in
1536.
If the opposition Labour Party wins the election, and judging by their 20-point lead in
opinion polls it is likely to do so, it has promised a referendum on an elected
non-legislative assembly for Wales. Wigley, one of Plaid Cymru's four members of
parliament, brands anything less than a full law-making body, similar to that already
promised by Labour to Scotland, an insult.
"We're being offered a toothless assembly," he told the party faithful in a
bilingual speech in Welsh and English.
"It would be a constitutional outrage to deny the people of Wales their choice of
a referendum and to restrict that choice to a simple yes/no vote."
Wales' second party is pressing for a multi-optional referendum with four choices -- no
change, an elected assembly, a law-making parliament and self-government within Europe.
"If all we are getting is a non-legislative assembly, an assembly with none of the
sort of power that the individual states have in the United States, the question is
whether that body is worth having at all," Wigley told Reuters.
Wigley thinks not and he is not alone. A recent BBC research poll showed that 53
percent of the Welsh people are in favour of a parliament with primary legislative powers.
Labour's offer falls short of its objective "because we want full self-government
within Europe. We see that as a sensible, meaningful step forward," Wigley added.
The ruling Conservatives see any power-sharing with Wales and Scotland as the first
steps down the road to an eventual break-up of the United Kingdom. They say a series of
reforms since 1979 has brought government nearer to the Welsh people.
"What Labour proposes amounts to nothing less than an attempt to foist an entirely
new constitutional order on our people based on fashionable left-wing prejudices in
defiance of the wisdom of the ages," party chairman Brian Mawhinney said in February
of Labour's plans for an assembly.
Plaid Cymru is confident of increasing its share of Wales' 40 seats in parliament from
four to six in the next election and hopes to capture 16 percent or 200,000 votes.
It realises it has an uphill battle in breaking Labour's stronghold in an ancient
country known for its rich heritage, that has produced the likes of poet Dylan Thomas and
theatrical giant Richard Burton, as well as its history of trade unionisn and socialism.
Fiercely non-conformist, the miners and ironworkers in the industrial south and farmers
in the picture-postcard valleys of the north vetoed a similar referendum in 1979.
That effort failed because the time was wrong, said Wigley, and circumstances are
different now.
"Nationalism is much stronger now than 1979. After 17 years of Tory (Conservative)
government and having four Secretaries of State for Wales that weren't even Welsh members
of parliament that shows the checks and balances in the system don't work.
"We've got a mountain to climb to pass Labour but I believe Labour is shooting
themselves in the foot on two scores: one with the constitutional score, and the second is
that their agenda is moving to the right.
"They are moving away from their traditional tenets and those were beliefs held
very dearly by a lot of people in Wales."
Under leader Tony Blair, Labour has ditched many of its traditional socialist beliefs
and moved to the political centre ground.
With a recent revival firmly establishing Welsh as an official language alongside
English, and a Welsh language televison station beaming programmes to its half-million
speakers, Plaid Cymru argues that its vision for a new Wales is not improbable.
First, a law-making parliament of 100 members elected under a proportional
representation system. Not less than five years later a referendum on full self-government
making Wales an independent country.
Wigley has already questioned Chinmay Gharekhan, a senior adviser to U.N. Secretary
General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, about a place for Wales in the General Assembley.
"He indicated that the U.N. has a place for every self-governing country however
large or small," Wigley said.
* * *
By Mamadou Kaba
BAMAKO, Sept 29 (Reuter) - Mali's political family has drawn up battle lines for next
year's national and local elections, with the ruling party pushing through a new electoral
code in the face of an opposition boycott in parliament.
The 70 members of President Alpha Oumar Konare's Alliance for Democracy in Mali
(ADEMA)
in the 116-seat assembly voted on Friday for the new code, which the opposition says is
unfair.
"The government has abandoned the spirit of consensus through dialogue,"
opposition deputy Idrissa Ba said in a statement to parliament on behalf of 10 opposition
parties.
The elections in the first quarter of next year will be the first major test of Mali's
fledgling democracy, introduced as in many Francophone African countries in the early
1990s.
Konare, a historian, won the 1992 presidential poll after two decades of single-party
rule and violent pro-democracy protests. His ADEMA party won a majority in parliament.
Opposition parties, previously fragmented, have started to work together ahead of the
elections but alliances remain fragile -- sometimes numbering 10 parties, sometimes 12.
Ba represents the Sudanese Union-African Democratic Rally (US-RDA), which guided Mali
to independence from France in 1960 and was the sole party until 1968 when the Democratic
Union of the Malian People (UDPM) became the sole party.
Together the 10 parties who opposed the new code represent the bulk of the opposition
in parliament.
They accused the government of seeking to replace the 1991 code unilaterally adopting
it without consensus and submitting it to parliament where it enjoys a majority.
They say that the proposed 30-member independent national electoral commission
(CENI)
-- five members each for the ruling party and the opposition plus 10 each for society at
large and the public authorities -- will not be independent.
They say the method of polling envisaged by the new code for the parliamentary
elections -- a mix of proportional representation in some areas and majority vote in
others -- will be confusing and unfair.
The majority of the opposition, which argues that all members of the national assembly
should be elected in the same way, favours a system of straight proportional
representation.
A three-hour break, ordered by parliament speaker Ali Nouhoun Diallo to resolve the
deadlock, failed to bring the two sides any closer together and the ruling party went
ahead and voted the new code.
Since the October 1995 death in a car crash of Tieoule Mamadou Konate, runner up to
Konare in 1992, there has been no obvious leader of a combined opposition.
Many Malians are waiting to see whether General Amadou Toumani Toure, who took power in
1991, steered the country through its democratic transition and stood down, will stand.
Toumani Toure, widely respected in the region, has said he sees no reason why soldiers
should not become statesmen provided they leave the army first. He remains in the army and
Konare promoted him to general, Mali's top rank, on September 23.
Under the new code the presidential election will be based on a majority vote while the
municipal elections will use proportional representation.
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