Although I’m an Indian-living-in-England doper, I do follow Indian politics quite closely, from the nostalgic keeping-in-touch-with-home perspective. I’m just not sure there would be enough people who would have either the background or the interest to discuss this. Indian politics can be interesting at times, enormously frustrating at others.
But let’s see; I’m sure there will be an interesting story or two soon enough.
John DiFool writes:
> I’d at least expect it for the British elections-but I didn’t even realize that Blair
> has been out for almost a full year now, as his successor doesn’t even seem to
> get any ink on this side of the pond.
Do you read newspapers or news magazines? Reading just the SDMB is a terrible way to get the news.
We’re Aussies and we really don’t give a crap.
Thanks for the clear explanation. As you can imagine, I had heard of this event, but not in very much detail–for example, if our Government does something contentious, there are occasionally calls from various quarters for the GG to exercise her powers “like they did in Australia.” Naturally, little explanation of just what happened in the runup to the event in Australia is given. Your explanation helped a great deal–again, many thanks.
Thank you all for the descriptions of Canadian parliament and Aussie history. Next question: where in the process is the Canadian Parliament now?
We had some mock government things in our high school too…I had a pretty good, if tough, teacher, that put us through some great things. However, we never learned about parliaments, or very little anyway.
I try, but it’s different to follow it on your own, then it is to discuss with someone. Try me next time with a thread, provided it doesn’t sink like a stone by the time I get to it!
I do…but I am not coming here to “get the news”. I am coming here to get a broader perspective on things I don’t fully understand. You see, if I try to learn more, sometimes I don’t even know the right questions to ask. Here I often learn different aspects of what I already knew, stuff I didn’t know, what other people think of it, and also questions to ask to further my knowledge.
It’s a weird situation: despite having the slenderest plurality of any government ever, the current Conservative government has (I think) hung on longer than any other minority government in the past. It’s currently being kept in power by the Liberals, who are saddled with an unpopular leader and don’t want to have an election right now*, and who are therefore either supporting the government, or voting against the government in such small numbers that the government can pass its bills.
Nobody is quite sure when the election will be. We are approaching the end of the spring session this week, so the government could fall on a bill this autumn, or else in the spring of 2009 (possibly the budget).
However, due to a fixed election bill that was passed by the present government, if the government doesn’t fall, it is to be dissolved in October 2009.
*For reasons that escape me. What, they think that propping up the Tories, for fear of whom most of their voters chose them in the first place, will make them more popular?
You ain’t just whistling Dixie.
What I don’t get is the whole “Shadow Minister” thing. The name sounds to me like they deal with nefarious secret governmental goings-on, but I’m sure that’s not the case.
The shadow cabinet is simply the members of an opposition party who are named as that party’s spokespeople on the issues of various government departments. For example, NDP MP Olivia Chow is the critic for Citizenship and Immigration, and therefore is the party’s chief spokeswoman on issues relating to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration and her department.
See, now that is passing strange. But interesting.
A)Is there any chance that the government, for whatever reason, won’t be dissolved then? Anything that could happen between then and now?
B)If this government passed the bill, I guess they kind of shot themselves in the foot if they are also not leaving?
C)If they had not passed the bill…what then? What mechanism would be in place to oust them?
I don’t know what exceptions the bill provides for. Under the constitution, there must be an election every five years, except in situations of war or insurrection when 2/3 of MPs vote to continue the session. I believe that’s happened once, perhaps twice, during the World Wars.
I don’t think the gov’t will be reluctant to leave when the fixed date comes up, because that gives them the prestige of leaving exactly when they said they would, rather than having been defeated. Politically, that would be an edge in a general election.
I believe that once the constitutional limit is reached, Parliament is automatically dissolved and an election held. There’s not much the gov’t can do about that, short of holding an insurrection or something.
Well, I see that what I posted in post#21 is out-of-date, as respects Canada. I hadn’t been aware that they converted to fixed election dates. So they took the perk of timing the next election away from the incumbent government . . . they can still lose a vote of confidence, but they can’t dissolve Parliament on their own initiative near the end of the term. I wonder if we’ll ever see the government stage a loss deliberately for the purpose of forcing an election, as happened (allegedly) in Germany a few years ago.
They’ve already tried it numerous times, but the Liberals have ended up supporting them each time. They’ve now supported or not defeated the government on something like 40 confidence or supply bills.
Ok, so if there is already a law in the constitution (do you capitalize it? Is it a formal document?) to hold an election every five years, what was the purpose of the bill passed by the government? Just to look good?
Also, when the vote comes, how does it work? Say today the gov’t says, Ok, we will have an election come November. Press releases are issued, etc. How do they set the formal voting date? Do you have something resembling an electoral college? Or is it all popular vote?
Most fascinating thread, and I admit I should learn more about my Northern neighbor!
Spain has a similar system too; it is unlikely to get much ado here because there isn’t a lot of Spaniards around, we know each other’s political positions, we don’t expect to convince each other of anything, we don’t even vote in the same areas, and anyway who the hell cares.
In Spain the election date is set when the government announces the dissolution of Parliament and the next election. Different Regions have their own Parliamentary Elections at different times, but in general we try to avoid having too many election dates. All city councils for a Region are elected on the same date; if there’s national or regional elections due at more or less the same time, all these elections are held together.
Switzerland’s system is direct democracy: lots of things which in a place with representative democracy would be decided by those representatives (city councils, MPs, government) have to be decided through a vote. I’m told there’s a canton which organizes things so they just have a single canton-wide meeting every year where they vote on every issue for that year by count of hands; in larger ones there may be votes going on every week. When I was living in Basel there was a pretty heated (for Swiss standards) campaign on whether the local Casino would be allowed to get permission to modernize their building or not.
A formal election must be called sometime within 5 years. usually the governing party will pick a date sometime in this period based on what their perception of winning will be. The new bill sets a firm date at 4 year intervals taking immediate popularity out of the equation.
Elections Canada sets the actual date.
Each province is divided up geographically into ridings. You vote for the party in your riding who you believe will best represent your needs. Each riding gets decided by popular vote, so if party A gets 45%, party B gets 30%, and party C gets 25% (simplified) then the candidate for party A wins the riding, and a seat in the House of Commons.
The party who wins more seats than any other party is asked to form the next government. The leader of that party typically becomes the Prime Minister. So, we don’t vote directly for the P.M. We vote for Members of Parliament.
If the governing party wins more seats than all the other parties added together then it’s a majority government who can rule and pass bills with no opposition. If the governing party holds fewer seats than the other parties combined then theoretically the other parties can bond together and vote down bills, thereby triggering an election. (Simplified again.)
It happened even more recently than this. Paul Martin’s Liberal government lost a vote of confidence in December 2005, and the Conservatives under Stephen Harper won the January 2006 elections.
Anaamika, the fixed elections bill passed by the current federal parliament basically says that elections shall be held some time in October (second week I think; it probably even specified which day) no later than four years after the preceding election. Since the last election happened, as I’ve said, in January 2006, the next one should happen in October 2009. But this law did not actually change the constitution (Harper seems to be trying to do a lot of changes to Canada’s electoral system without actually amending the constitution, but that’s another story), so constitutionally speaking parliamentary terms still last five years, and it doesn’t seem to have removed the prime minister’s power to ask for a dissolution. So Harper could still ask the Governor General to dissolve parliament and hold elections in, say, spring 2009, but unless he loses a confidence vote, he won’t do it because it would look bad politically. That’s why he seems to be trying to set up his defeat on a confidence vote, but the Liberals won’t allow it.
From here:
However, the “fixed date elections” act for Canadian elections specifically references the fact that it in no way interferes with the Governor General’s constitutional right to dissolve Parliament and call an election, so it’s mainly a meaningless PR law, since the PM could still choose to or be forced to call an election earlier, and most governments don’t go the full 5 years anyway, for reasons already explained. The current Conservative government, as the ones that passed the law with much “government reform” fanfare, don’t want to voluntarily call an election and expose the lack of substance to this “reform”, but have had no luck in being “forced” to do so.
(There is some concern that it might be an unconstitutional interference with the 5-year limit set in the Constitution, and it’s not all that restrictive anyway, as any government that wanted to wait more than 4 years before calling an election could simply revoke the act and go back to the original 5-year limit.)
I don’t start threads about Canadian politics because I’m too embarassed.
Here’s a link to the entire Canadian Constitution. Have a look.