The Alternative Vote referendum

Alexander Tetenta reflects on the recent referendum on whether Britain should use the Alternative Vote system to elect its Members of Parliament to the House of Commons.

Okay folks; let’s see what’s happening on the street today. The beauty of Democracy still lies in the notion of choice, if you ask me. However, punditocracy is increasingly playing a part in delivering informed choices to the masses.

As the blogosphere keeps buzzing with the news of AV’s Obituary, one is left to wonder what had happened to our rising star of the 2010 General Election debates. Currently, the traffic seems to be leading away from “Clegg Street”, and some commentators have been quick to suggest that many in the Black Community did actually vote in favour of reforming the electoral system.

I don’t really know which Black people you’ve been speaking to, but I did in fact vote “No” for the referendum, without equivocation because I had my reasons.

At first, many did actually expect a Lib-Lab Coalition instead of a Con-Dem one, however, the need to keep right wing influences in check made the coalition permissible. With that in mind, nobody was clear on the deals behind closed doors, but one thing that seemed apparent was that the university tuition fees debate could have a voice of reason on the cabinet. When that did not happen, I suppose that most young people in particular did what they normally do when they felt disgruntled with false promises.

In my view, some had turned out to vote against AV simply because the proponent of that voting system had done little to deliver on the promises made to a new generation of students. Then the cuts hit minority communities and in Scotland particularly, others saw the AV debate as a distraction from what really mattered most in their daily lives - employment, decentralising the police, more investment in education, tax-ease for the poor and elderly, a more effective NHS (which works quite well for the most parts), a benefit system that gets people to work and not perpetually dependent on the system, good early-childhood education, banking reform, and an endless list of pertinent problems being discussed by families over dinner on a daily basis, including how Britain could afford £650 million in aid for Pakistan, where Osama had been hiding.

In place of a serious discussion pertaining to what mattered most to the “general will of the people”, words like “Vampire”, “Dragons”, and “Politics of Tribe” began making their way into the AV debate, and people began to not only listen, but to actually pay attention. Eventually, one realised that when people go to the polls, they usually have one party or candidate in mind, perhaps due to age-long family voting traditions. This therefore implied that after ticking “1” for the candidate or party you mostly believed in, there was a tendency to randomly tick “2”, “3”, “4”, “5”, and so on for the other candidates without neither the time nor the patience to get acquainted with their manifesto promises.

In the end, votes would get distributed to prop up candidates 1, 2, and 3 should none fail to secure majority votes, and there may be no end in sight for coalitions without the full mandate of the people. For now, someone’s hands seem tied in government; Rest in Peace AV- the streets are watching.

Alexander Tetenta

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