I dont see any
burn!. The party leaders of the three relevant parties were asked a question. The reason I havent responded yet is because here the question was asked at 6:28 am. Not exactly the time of day when Im most active. I just got home from school. Ill post my reaction to the posts in this thread asap.
First of all I dont think this elections should be about which party will form the best government. General elections are first of all cosa elections and I consider it far more imporant how parties will vote in the cosa than how they will form a government. Especially, because I dont think there are many differences between the parties on that area. Last elections I asked S:reu Grischun why he voted RUMP and if my memory is correct his answer was that he believed the RUMP would be the only party capable of governing. Now, 4 months later we havent heard much from the government, with the exception of immigration and obviously, the contribution of the PM and the distain to all the reunision stuff, which is the only reason the MRP still supports this government. I dont think a PPT government or a progressive coalition government would have done thing very much differently. I dont think progressives would have done better, but not much worse either. When the role of the government in Talossan life is so small, why focus the elections on the government and not on the cosa. In the end, it is the ziu that will be making the big decisions. (BTW, this is one of the reasons the MRP wants an elected Seneschal, which I guess is already one policy difference)
Secondly, I dont think more than one progressive party is a problem. It is unrealistic to think all progressives are the same. Actually when S:reu Grischun and S:reu Ursüm and Capt. Asmourescu and S:reu Bisquinc and me were all still in the PPT, it seemed almost impossible to come up with a unifying vision on some of the at that time most crucial subjects. The PPT was divided on the republic, on the three strikes law, on micronations. I dont remember we knew what we wanted to do with electoral reform. I think the differences within the RUMP and the PPT were larger than the differences between those parties. Both parties I think were united around a common ideology of either being the conservative establishment or the progressive oppostion, but when it came to changing that ideology into specific ideas it didnt work out. All progressives wanted to change a lot of things, but everyone wanted to change something else.
In the Netherlands, progressive spoliticians are all shouting about progressive cooperation against the current conservative government. It helps their own parties, because progressives are all very pleased with progressive parties cooperating, but it actually does not help the progressive bloc as a whole, because someone who is now in doubt between the conservative-liberal (no Doug, that is not neccesarily a contradiction) government party VVD and the Progressive liberal party D66 (Of which I am a member actually, not very active though) will not vote for D66 if it cooperates too closely with the Socialist Party. At the same time omeone who is in doubt between the populist conservative PVV (Anyone heard of Geert Wilders? Every European country seems to have its own right wing extremist. He is ours) and the also slightly populist Socialist party will not vote for the SP when they are cooperating with the intellectual "elitist" D66. A long irrelevant ranting, I know, but it actually has a point. Not all opposition is the same. When a party is united only in its fight against the government , but doesnt have clear unifying ideas being together may not be the best idea.
Although I admit that since the reunision it has become rather crowded I would actually say that Talossa doesnt have to much progressive parties (
Im actually saddened to hear about the end of the CSP, because despite the fact they didnt really seem to have a program, I was really interested to see were it was going. In any case I hope S:reu Grischun wont be voting RUMP again next elections, because I feel they have been in charge on their own long enough. Errr, apparently I misread and the CSP hasnt decided yet.), but that Talossa has
too few conservative parties. I guess a large majority of the Talossans, including many pocket votes are conservative, but there is only one party: the RUMP. And there is a lot of diversity within that party. But sometimes I get the impression the RUMP is just a bunch of conservative politicians united under the banner of the establishment vs all the radicalist progressives who have all kinds of silly ideas about destroying Talossa, instead of a party with a clear united vision about the future of Talossa. I think the presence of more parties is good for Talossa, because those parties are better able to represent the political diversity of Talossan politics. That way voters will know what they get.
The RUMP complained about the opposition not being able to make a stand, but could the opposition ever win, when almost all centrist and conservative politicians are RUMP members, who were not going to be convinced by progressives, even if their is a lot of internal disagreement.
So before the creation of the MRP and the CSP there was more internal division between PPT members and RUMP members than betwee both parties. I remember two elections ago, the party manifestos of the RUMP and the PPT were remarkably similar. This similarity obviously disappeared when it came down to the actual voting, when it was obvious most PPT members voted very different from most RUMP members in a lot of cases. (It often seemed as if PPT members always voted PER and RUMP members always voted CONTRA) But those difference werent universal because on almost every subject a few PPT or RUMP mc voted against their party. Because of those few members, both parties (In any case the PPT) seemed unable to make clear the difference between the parties during the elections. This didnt turn out as a problem for the RUMP, because they were the large establishment anyway, but it was disastrous for the PPT, because they were not able to convince voters of the difference.
So after the elections for the 42th cosa, which went disastrous. I hoped the PPT would be able to come up with some sort of united program which we could all agree on. Especially on the issue of the republic, which I, at that sime suspected had played a part in the large defeat of the PPT, but it didnt work out. So then after some thinking S:reu Bisquinc and I decided to form a new party, with a united vision on the issues that at time concerned Talossa.
The MRP was not meant to be the largest opposition party, and it will never be. But it was meant to be a long lasting, stabile opposition party, with a strong opinion on the issues that concerned Talossa at the moment. Sure, we have some internal difference once in a while, and like everyone else here we change our opinions once in a while, but we were able to come up with a manifesto (which can be found here:
talossa.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=5782 Its a bit outdated obviously)with a lot of ideas that both of us fully supported and we are working on changing a few things to make the manifesto even better this time. Of course, if someone else, who shares most of our ideas, but not all of them wants to join (hint,hint), the party is flexible enough to edit it again. The result of this is that we can offer the voter our solutions to the problems we find important. Someone who votes for knows what he/she gets, while someone voting for the RUMP would have to wait to see if his/her votes goes to a conservative or a centrist MC (Thats why I liked the ZRT idea of candidate lists).
It is true that very often the MRP agrees with some of the PPT members. Obviously our aproach is usually slightly different. Like I said in the chatroom:
I guess, but Im not sure, that the MRPT would be slightly monarchist and slightly derivatist. That would put us in the RUMP bloc
.
But we are a very practical party, we focus more on ideas than on ideology. [/u] [/quote]I think last elections the MRP was more able to come up with clear plans for electoral reform than the PPT, which only said something vague like: "Therefore, the Progressive Party of Talossa will attempt serious Ziu reform in the way of making the Senäts more accountable and the Ziu as a whole, more democratic and inclusive." and we were able to come up with a vision, even if it was a bit vague, on the republic, while the PPT failed to even mention the republic in its manifesto, which I thought was kinda weird.
For me, it is hard to compare the two parties, because to me it is not entirely clear what the PPT thinks about some of the issues. But there are also some differences in content. (Obviously both the PPT and the MRP still have to come up with their manifestos for next elections, so I can only speak of issues from the past. Usually parties only start to discuss politics a week before the election or something like that. We still have three months!!!) For example, some PPT members had a problem with a partisan SOS, the MRP thinks that is unreasonable. We are strongly against abolishing the 3-strikes law (unless there is a good similar alternative), I think some PPT members are in favour (But again Im not sure). In general, I think the approach of both parties is the biggest difference.
I sincerely hope the RUMP wont get more than 100 seats this time, because I think it would be good to have a coalition government. The MRP will run next elections, but not as a large party. I think, just like last time we wont do a very personal campaign, even though that is a very effective strategy, but try to debate on the witt forum, because our main goal is not to become a large party but to spread our ideas about personal freedom and electoral reform.
You may still want to vote for us, but you still dont have to.