Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here.
Let me put the debate to rest once and for all. Here are four compelling reasons.
Elections slow down decision-making and they tend to have a negative impact on the economy.
So said John Key, our wise leader. And it’s a fact that countries that have four or five year parliamentary terms have better-performing economies. Like Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Italy.
A system where the next election is never far away promotes short term thinking, where politicians are focused on doing what is popular rather than what is best for the country.
So just imagine how good our system would be if we did away with proper elections altogether. We could be the North Korea of the South Pacific. Our politicians could then get on with focusing on the important things, like improving our missile technologies, holding huge military parades, and developing a more nutritious grade of grass for our people to eat.
A four-year term would improve the behaviour of our politicians.
I’m a big fan of the UK parliamentary system. They have elections every five years, and their politicians are much better behaved than ours, as demonstrated by the impeccable behaviour of the Blair, Brown and Cameron administrations.
British MPs don’t allow themselves to get distracted by petty disputes. They just get on with the job. Who has time for such sordid squabbles when there’s a moat to be cleaned?
Longer electoral terms promote stability and allow governments to get things done.
Exactly! I often wonder what the Labour government of the 1980s might have been able to achieve if they had been given eight years to do their work, instead of six.
Our government certainly wouldn’t now be flogging off all our precious SOEs, would it? No, they’d have been sold for pennies years ago.
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