One more week, yes, the coming Saturday on 26 November 2011, the general election for Parliament and the referendum on the voting system will be held. The Kiwis will go to poll to decide which political party or parties will run New Zealand for the next 3 years and whether to keep the existing Mixed Members Proportional (MMP) voting system or to change to another voting system.
According to Wikipedia, the Parliament of New Zealand ( in Māori : Pāremata Aotearoa ) consists of the Queen of New Zealand and the New Zealand House of Representatives and, until 1951, the New Zealand Legislative Councils. The House of Representatives is often referred to as “Parliament”
The House of Representatives usually consists of 120 Members of Parliament (MPs), sometimes more due to overhanging seats. MPs are directly elected by universal suffrage. The form of New Zealand government essentially follows the Westminster system, and the government is led by the Prime Minister and cabinet who are chosen from amongst the members of the House of Representatives.
Parliament is physically located in Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand since 1865 and is currently in its 49th term. The current Parliament are made up of eight parliament parties, namely ACT New Zealand, Green Party, Labour Party, Maori Party, National Party, progressive and United Future. The present government is National Party in coalition with ACT New Zealand, Green Party, Maori Party and United Future while Labour party is the opposition leader.
An eligible citizen or permanent resident has to enrol or register as a voter by 26 October 2011 in order to receive an EasyVote information pack about one week before election. Most of the registered voters would have received their information pack by now. It consists of a personal EasyVote Card and all the information he needs to know. The EasyVote card shows his name, electorate and where his name is on the electoral roll. One interesting information which is printed in twenty (20) languages namely English, Māori, Cook island Maori, Samoan, Tongan, Korean, Chinese traditional, Chinese simplified, Somali, Farsi, Arabic, Vietnamese, Thai, Gujarati, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer and, Punjabi is “Show your Easyvote card when you vote & Vote at a polling place listed for your electorate”. This shows how multi-cultural New Zealand is and the fairness extended to each race.
Every eligible voter will be given two voting papers in the polling place – one orange and one purple. The orange one is the 2011 general Election voting paper used to elect Members of Parliament. The purple one is the Referendum voting paper.
Under the present Mixed Members Proportional (MMP) system, each voter using the orange voting paper has :
- A party vote where he chooses the political party resulting in the total number of seats each political party gets in Parliament and,
- An electorate vote where he chooses the MP he wants to represent the electorate he lives in.
The purple voting paper gives the voter the chance to have his say on the voting system he likes to use to elect his parliament in the future. The voter will be asked two questions :
- Whether he wants to Keep MMP or whether he wants to change to another voting system and,
- If New Zealand decides to change from MMP, which of four other voting systems he would choose namely First Past the Post (FPP), Preferential Voting (PV),
If at least half of the voters choose to keep MMP, the electoral commission will review it over the next year to recommend changes that should be made to the way it works. However, if more than half of the voters opt to change the voting system, Parliament may decide to hold another Referendum next election ( in 2004) to decide between MMP and the alternative voting system that gets the most support this year.
Under FFP, each person gets to vote for one candidate in their electorate and Parliament is made up of the persons with the highest number of votes in each area. The most popular political party usually win a share of seats in Parliament that is larger than its share of overall votes. This encourages the formation of strong single-party government. Minor parties are often excluded altogether.
With PV, Parliament would also be formed from one candidate from each electorate. The difference is that voters rank the candidates and if no one gets more than half the votes the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated. The second choice of those who voted for the eliminated candidate is then counted and so on.
Under STV, a number of MPs are elected from each electorate and voters rank the candidates in order of preference. A candidate has to receive a fixed proportion of the votes to win. If a candidate reaches the quota during the first count they are elected and the rest of their votes are redistributed according to the second preference. If there are still seats to fill after the first count the lowest polling candidate is eliminated and their votes are redistributed according to the second choice. This continues until all the seats are filled.
The SM system would see 90 members of Parliament, each representing one electorate, elected on a first past the post basis. Voters get a second vote for the party of their choice and the remaining 30 seats would be allocated proportionally according to that.
Another interesting point to note is on 2 February 2011 Wednesday, the present Prime Minister, Hon. John Key announced the 2011 general election to be held on 26 November 2011 which was ten (10) months away then. He subsequently announced that he has no intention to run the new government in coalition with other parties after the 2011 general election. It appears that he was very confident to win the election with substantial majority. However, if the latest Herald-DigiPoll were translated into votes, National would be able to just govern on its own, with a small cushion of two votes from Act and one from United Future assuming the Maori Party, United Future and Mana keep their seats as reported in the New Zealand Herald dated 18 November 2011.
The teapot tape saga happened Friday last week has turned into a political storm. It arose from a meeting over a cup of tea in a café in Newmarket between the Prime Minister John Key and Act’s Epsom candidate, Mr John Banks. The cameraman claimed that the conversation was accidently taped but the PM thought otherwise and laid a complaint with the police. The cup of tea that was supposed to be a lifeline to Act has now left the party at the mercy of how the Epsom electorate see the tape and the comments. The cameraman has asked the Court for an urgent ruling on whether the conversation was illegally recorded in addition to asking the Prime Minister and National Party for public retraction and an apology for making comments he claims have destroyed his professional reputation.
It was reported that the conversation would cause embarrassment to both Messrs John Key and John Bank according to those who have heard the conversation from the tape.
The latest Herald-DigiPoll survey showed Mr Winston Peters' party (New Zealand First) on 4.9 per cent and with the potential, along with the Greens and the Maori Party, to hold the balance of power; this may have caused some concern for the National.
Well, let’s hope that the teapot tape saga will be resolved amicably or legally or….. before the polling day on Saturday 26 November 2011, meaning one more week to go.
Published by Vincent h t Yeoh on Saturday 19 November 2011.
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