2024-28 An Honorary Doctorate

Dr. Alexander Rusetsky of Tbilisi's International Peace University at the 3rd Dec. presentation.

2024-27 COP29 - the COP in Baku

It failed, in large part because the UN still doesn't know how best a diverse group of participants can come to a collective consensus.  Obvioulsy, it cannot be done by majority vote.  So they throw the baby out with the bathwater, and don't use voting at all!  Instead, at Saudi Arabia's suggestion, they use what they call consensus  -  protracted discussions, countless coffees, and often the most bizarre use of the chairperson's gavel  -  with every country having a veto.  The very opposite of consensus.  So, needless to say, someone in Baku was bound to apply the veto - and it was... Saudi Arabia.  

But why does no one even try preferential voting?  Why do so many politicians want, either (a) to win, or (b) not to lose, i.e., to veto; either (a) win everything, or (b) lose nothing.  Are politicians within countries, and countries in the UN, unable to accept a methodology, the use of which would mean that the outcome was (almost) bound to be a compromise?

2024-26 A world citizens' assembly?

The Ecologist has just published a review on Citizens' Assemblies  -   https://theecologist.org/2024/nov/22/citizens-assemblies-and-climate-crisis  -  and maybe, in the wake of COP29, we need a 'World Citizens' Assembly' to guide next year's COP in Brazil.

2024-25 COP29, George Monbiot, MBC

When talking on RTÉ on 12th Nov of the need for wise decision-making in COP gatherings, George Monbiot sings the praises of the MBC.  https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22459433/

"So what we need is... a voting process  -  and there are some very clever voting models, for instance, there is one promoted by the de Borda Institute [the Modified Borda Count MBC]  -  looking at how you can have a voting system which, instead of coming down to these 'yes-or-no' binaries, actually develops far more intelligent and nuanced responses than crude voting can..."  George Monbiot, 12.11.24, on RTÉ.

2024-24 US elections

In the East, many speak of “the unity of everything,” of all life, all energy, and all matter.  While in the West, in the US, the people divide into two; it is not only illogical, it is downright dangerous.  And not very democratic!

2024-23 The Middle East

Israel, Tel Aviv often tells us, is the only democracy in the Middle East.  Its population, parliament and cabinet are respectively, 20%, 10% and 0% Arab.  Is this democracy? 

It’s majority rule in which, apparently, 50% + 1 will do.  Netanyahu had a majority of just one in 2015.  The UK’s Tories passed this 50% threshold with some Unionists in 2017, as did Labour in 1978; the Austrians did it with the Freedom Party in 1999, as too the Dutch with a namesake in 2010.  But in Israel, the  current, extreme right-wing majority coalition is (not the but) a cause of war!

Not only in Israel but right across Europe, the extreme right is successful, electorally.  But in reality?  Consider this: voters have preferences, so in Belfast for example, many DUP voters doubtless prefer the UUP to SF, and many SF supporters the SDLP to the DUP.   But extremist parties don’t like preferential systems; in the main, it is the centre ground – Alliance, GP, SDLP and UUP, etc. – who cross the party divides.  

But votes can be accurate only if they include party preferences.  In the Dutch 2023 general election - single-preference PR - on a ballot paper with over 1,000 candidates, voters could choose just one candidate: this one ‘good’, all the others, all equally, seemingly, ‘not good’.  So most or all of these votes were inaccurate.  The count therefore, the collation of all this inaccurate data, was almost definitely inaccurate as well, yet it implied that Geert Wilders was the most popular.  Similarly, the recent EU elections - in which every country has a form of PR - also suggested the extreme right was very popular, especially in those countries, like France and Germany, with a single-preference system.  

(Switzerland, and) former conflict zones often have, not only PR elections, but also all-party, power-sharing.  To suggest a party of 30, 40… 49% should not have a role in government because of majority rule, runs the risk that, when its ‘popularity’ does pass 50%, this extremist party will take over, completely!  In 1933, Hitler’s Enabling Act was a (weighted) majority vote. 

Surely, democracy in Dublin, London, Tel Aviv and elsewhere, should include (a) a preferential PR electoral system - the current Israeli system is also single-preference PR; (b) multi-option decision-making (as befits a multi-party chamber); and (c) a form of all-party governance.  To take the Dutch example again, in 2023, the PVV won 25% of the seats in parliament, so it would have an influence of 25% in an all-party cabinet; under majority rule, however, in the current four-party majority coalition, it has a 42% influence!  

So we should change our politics, if only for the sake of peace in the Middle East.  And let’s be honest: majority rule could not work in the absolute ideal, a one-state Israel/Palestine solution; secondly, it would not work well in a two-state solution, forever provoking the more belligerent to out-number their more moderate rivals.  Granted, it might be difficult to work with SF in Dublin, the PVV in The Hague, the AfD in Berlin, and so on, in France, Austria, Portugal etc., but it would be more difficult in the Middle East, and maybe this is the price of peace.  

2024-22 An Honorary Degree... from Georgia!

In 1989, when the USSR was still a one-party state, many environmentalists and any ‘Soviet’ Greens were in the Ecological Union, which met in Moscow; thus I befriended the soon-to-be founder of the Georgian Greens, Zurab Zhvania.  In 1990, he invited me to give a press conference (in Russian) in Tbilisi on power-sharing; the local coverage was good, but when Georgia became independent one year later, the people elected Zviad Gamsakhurdia, a majoritarian.  So, majority rule.  Hence the ethnic wars in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, followed by a civil war.  Eduard Shevardnadze then took over, with Zurab now an MP in support, until 2004, when the so-called Rose Revolution saw Mikheil Saakashvili become President, Zurab the PM, and Nino Burjanadze the Speaker.  One year later, Zurab was dead, supposedly from a gas leak, but many think he was murdered on the orders of Saakashvili who, in 2008, when Vladimir Putin was in Beijing for the Olympics, started the war against Russia.  Putin was not the only guilty party of that war.

I was an OSCE election observer in Georgia’s elections in 2004 and 2012, a Russian/English interpreter in the EUMM 2008-9, a visiting lecturer in 2017 and 2019, and I've just been awarded an honorary doctorate by Tbilisi’s new International University of Peace.

2024-21 The Borda border poll: video

https://player.vimeo.com/video/998203527?badge=0&autopause=0&player_id=0&app_id=58479

2024-20 The Féile: a Borda border poll

FÉILE AN PHOBAIL A REPORT OF A ROLE-PLAY ON PREFERENTIAL DECISION-MAKING Should majority voting, a cause of the Troubles, be part of the solution?

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2024-19 Politics, the art of compromise

CHANGE THE VOTERS’ ELECTORAL SYSTEM and THE MPs' DECISION-MAKING

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