{"id":10011,"date":"2015-03-04T22:25:01","date_gmt":"2015-03-05T03:25:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=10011"},"modified":"2015-03-18T23:44:13","modified_gmt":"2015-03-19T03:44:13","slug":"politics-as-usual-majorities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/politics-as-usual-majorities\/","title":{"rendered":"POLITICS AS USUAL: Majorities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Does a majority a mandate make?
\nBy Alison Collins-Mrakas<\/strong><\/p>\n

And by mandate, I mean free rein to institute any policy the newly ensconced government of the day sees fit to bring forward? This thought occurred to me the other day when I was listening to the talking heads debate the relative merits (or lack thereof) of Premier Wynne\u2019s new sex education curriculum.
\nOne of the pundits intimated that Ms. Wynne and her red machine would have met with considerably less electoral success had they been upfront with this proposed, now soon to be implemented program. The supposition being that this \u201ccontroversial\u201d program would have been toxic at the polls, so the party kept this political arrow in the quiver, only to be shot once a majority had been secured.
\nInteresting thought, though I think the premise is faulty. Every party has plans for when it attains office. Some of those plans are public and some are rolled out after the fact. I don\u2019t think it is necessarily nefarious (well, not always, at least). It is common sense. You don\u2019t give away all your ideas during a campaign, lest they be appropriated \u2013 or more accurately, stolen \u2013 by the other side.
\nYou do what you have to do to win first, then you do what you have to do to govern. But with a majority? You do what you want to do to govern.
\nAnd therein lays the problem: the wee little matter of why you were elected to govern. If what you presented as your policy goals, your policy direction, your political ideology to the voting public is abandoned once you get to office, the public does have the right to feel cheated, hoodwinked, conned. Pick whatever word approximates the words \u201clied to\u201d best. Not much the voters can do about it, though they can complain about it vociferously. And hold them to account the next time around\u2026assuming anyone cares by that point, mind you.
\nBut what of the idea that those that decide on our behalf decide things that we never intended them to discuss, let alone implement? Does a \u201cmajority\u201d give them carte blanche to move forward with any new idea that suits their fancy?
\nIt would appear that way at times. When defending the imposition of a wildly unpopular policy or program, how often do we hear in response, the statement, \u201cthe electorate gave us a strong mandate to govern\u2026\u201d? The next words \u201cas we see fit\u201d are \u2013 of course \u2013 implied not spoken.
\nLeaving aside the paternalistic subtext of that statement, the \u201cthere there dear, we know best\u201d undertone, there is the larger issue of just what a mandate means exactly.
\nA mandate nowadays is built upon a foundation of rather flimsy political capital. With less than 40 per cent on average of the voting public bothering to vote, even if a party received 100 per cent of the votes cast, they still wouldn\u2019t represent upwards of 60 percent of the public.
\nAs it stands, to put them in majority territory, the \u201cwinning\u201d party needs only 40 per cent of the votes cast or just 16 – 20 per cent of the eligible electorate. And with that, triumphant in victory, they proclaim that they have received an \u201coverwhelming majority\u201d and a \u201cstrong mandate\u201d to govern as a consequence. Hogwash.
\nThus, when next they attempt to inflict some pet project on the populace ostensibly for the good of us all, perhaps that would be a good time to remind them that the \u201call\u201d that they represent is \u2013 in reality – not much at all\u2026
\nUntil next week, stay informed, stay involved because this is \u2013 after all \u2013 Our Town.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Does a majority a mandate make? By Alison Collins-Mrakas And by mandate, I mean free rein to institute any policy the newly ensconced government of the day sees fit to bring forward? This thought occurred to me the other day when I was listening to the talking heads debate the relative merits (or lack thereof) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2Bt","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-11 03:11:00","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}