U.K. elections
Sir,—Mark Sadler (July 23) opposes electoral reform on the grounds that the result would be a “foreign form of democracy”. One wonders what native virtues he ascribes to a system devised centuries ago by a feudal elite on the other side of the globe. The New Zealand colonists took two significant steps towards a system suited to the new State, but their descendants are apparently too hidebound by complacency or vested interests to continue the process. Maori representation, always token, has been allowed to degenerate into an increasingly offensive anachronism, while universal suffrage, unsupported by other constitutional safeguards, has become a licence for dictatorial executive powers. While lauding this latter feature as the main virtue of the present system Mark Sadler fails to explain why it leaves us, in his own words, “no better off than nations with proportional representation.” — Yours, etc., S. O. MAHONY. July 23, 1983.
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Press, 26 July 1983, Page 20
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150U.K. elections Press, 26 July 1983, Page 20
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