Saturday, August 14, 2010

2010 Election: boring campaign with no real choices!

I never saw such boring election campaign for the last decade. Even the candidates are not putting the posters with their pictures in streets or on shop fronts. As if they are ashamed from themselves. And they should be, anyway.

There are few common features between the mainstream political parties:
1- There is no political party that runs on concrete achievements in parliament. All parties are making big promises, as if they are not in parliament for decades.
2- There are no actions, stunts or big announcements. There are only boring media conferences and releases.
3- The Multiculturalism and all related issues are not mentioned by any party, regardless of its own classification of its degree of progressiveness. As if racism and Islamophobia has not reached high degree to the point that a candidate had questioned the right of fellow citizen to run as candidate only because he is a Muslim.
4- The high degree of lying and deception coming from leaders of all three mainstream media-made parties. The last deceptive “promise” came from the Greens leader who promised to spend 4 billion dollars on dental care if he will be elected. He had the courage to insult our intelligence thinking that we do not know that senators like him can block or pass legislations, but cannot produce and implement one.

It can be claimed comfortably that this election is really about nothing: no real choices, no real alternatives and no real solutions. So the voters will choose between the bad and the worst.

The leaders of these media-made parties are talking about their “vision” to find solutions for issues, as if we are living on mars.

The Labor, who has three years in government, could not fix any inherited trouble. The health system is on brink of collapse, the rental crises had reached unbelievable level with accommodation shortages of more than 200,000, the racism and Islamophobia became so endemic and the public transport is in big chaos.

But the voters cannot forget the black era of Liberals in government, which inherited Australia with all these troubles in funding public services, attacks on multiculturalism and all other troubles in the society.

And the Greens leader runs on no one concrete achievement except blocking progressive legislations, promoting anti-family values and leading a pure white racist party. He still has the courage to smile and make claims that his party is the only progressive party in parliament.

Now, let us examine why a Muslim or new migrant Non English speaking would vote/not vote for this party or that.
- The Liberals are extremely racist with deep xenophobic agenda. Their leader does not hide his racist and Islamophobic ideas and commitments.
- The Labor, while less racist, but has no courage to enforce real change in society to reverse the devastating policies of their Liberal predecessor. While they stopped the official attack on multiculturalism, but they did not take any real steps to counteract existing racism and Islamophobia. No changes were introduced to fix the inhumane welfare system. And no real big investment in public education, public health and public transport.
- The Greens has nil achievement on any front, and we need any shred of evidence to prove the opposite. Not only this. The Greens has very poor track of achievement on any issues important for Non English speaking and Muslims. Enough to mention that the party lacks any colour in hierarchy and parliamentary teams except the White.

The most amazing feature of this election is the fact that the media is only talking about 3 political parties. As if there is no other political parties or prominent independents run for election anywhere in Australia. And this would explain why there are no real campaigns or even media stunts. It seems that the media, especially the regressive Murdoch and other corporate media, have their own agenda of promoting only these parties. And one wonders why voter is in deep trouble to decide who to vote for.

Despite the insistence of media to shape the election result according to their well-known hidden agendas, other political forces are existing. And they are growing steadily, even without media focus.

With all these media attempts to brain wash us, I think that the result will be different of what they are promoting. My expectations are:
- The Labor will win with comfortable majority.
- The Greens will not increase its primary vote comparing to the last election, if will not lose some. Depending on luck, they may keep their current representation. But definitely they will not increase their representation significantly to the point of winning senate seat in every state.
- The Greens most likely will not win Melbourne seat, despite the retirement of Labor sitting minister.

We think that Australian politics is in standstill at the moment with three mainstream parties that have no big or real differences. And we think that while the changes in Australia is very slow for many reasons, but deep changes to the system will emerge within the next decade.

But for now we should stress that any pro-multiculturalism element in society will put the Liberals and the Greens last on ballot papers in this election. While the Liberals were vocal racists, the Greens were practically racists.

The only bright side in this election will be the fact that we will most likely see the first Muslim federal politician elected to the parliament. The Labor party should be proud of this achievement.

Maybe this would be the only achievement Labor can be proud of.

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