Good Idea, Bad Idea

I remember once when I was in parliament, I told a colleague of mine how brilliant I thought the idea would be of ministers not being members of parliament - that those MPs who get voted in, and subsequently appointed to ministerial positions, should surrender their seats in parliament to whoever was beneath them on the list. To me, this seemed like a fine separation of powers. My colleague sort of smirked and shook his head and said, "You know why the Progressives once proposed that? Because they were in the ruling coalition then. Doing that basically puts the ruling coalition in an even stronger position than they already are."

And I realized he was right. There are 63 seats in parliament, 12 of which are ministerial seats. Now imagine that two parties - X and Y - have 35 seats combined and are the ruling coalition. 12 of their 35 seats are ministerial seats. But now, change it so that they have 35 seats in addition to 12 ministerial seats. Even if the ministers cannot vote on legislation, you can't very well prevent them from speaking on submitted bills or otherwise having influence. You can see why any party in the ruling coalition would consider this a good idea.

Well, guess what new bill is being stressed must be made into law now? And hey, big surprise, it's being proposed by one of the parties in the ruling coalition. The Social Democrats are calling for this to be made into law this month.

Interestingly enough, the Progressives are also on board. Great expectations, eh?

Don't get me wrong. I like the ruling coalition and what they're trying to do. I certainly don't think the right would do it much better. But I also don't think adding the proposed ten new MPs, and their subsequent salaries and benefits, is a very good idea. Especially if the right should happen to win next election year, heaven help us.