Riding the Swing

In an online response to an opinion piece in The Age about the impending Altona by-election, I stumbled across a novel idea; that voting for what you believe in isn’t necessarily the best idea. Now, this may seem like a stupid idea unless you find yourself between a gun and a hard vote, but given that this is (hopefully) not the case in Altona, you would be right in thinking that this is not what I’m talking about.

I’m referring to the idea of voting for a political ‘climate’ rather than any particular person or party per se. The good people of Altona and its surrounding suburbs find themselves residing in a ‘safe’ Labour seat. However, some people such as Randal from Point Cook, are not overly thrilled with the State Government’s performance regarding infrastructure and what have you. I get the impression that Randal is not overly keen on the opposition either and yet, he proposes voting for them. Why? Because, as he points out, if Altona were to become a swinging seat (in the political sense, not the waiting room chair of an unscrupulous establishment sense) both of the major political parties would start paying a lot more attention to it. The competition would spur on efforts by both parties to actually work towards sating the electorate’s hunger for improvement.

If such political competition were to arise in Malaysia, “Malaysia boleh” (literal translation is Malaysia can) could become more of a reality and less of a Russian space trip. As far as I’m aware, Malaysia is as close as it has ever been to an actual two party system pending the outcome of a court case. These are potentially exciting times for Malaysian politics, even for the ruling party. Hopefully, they will rise to the competition by bettering themselves. As such, they could win over more ardent supporters as opposed to voters who see no other option.

Whether or not this competition actually improves the situation is another thing. Obviously competition can lead to instability, like in Ukraine in 2004, and worse still, violent repression, like in Iran last year. Furthermore, competition doesn’t magically render politicians any more competent at what they do. As Sacha Baron Cohen once said to Tomasz Starzewski, “you can’t polish a turd.” For what it’s worth I believe that Malaysia and Altona ‘can,’ but whether they will or not is another thing.

Lastly, if you want to sit down and have a little think about whether you should vote based on morals alone, or vote based on what will benefit you directly, I’d recommend watching a German film called The Edukators.

Skip to the end: For some unknown reason I've started writing about politics when I'm somewhat uneducated in the area. Still, that hasn't stopped me writing about things before.