Bruce Bisset: Little equality in big stick' rule

Seems  to me most peoples' belief in what democracy is and how a democratic system should work is actually misconception.
Especially as what we have in New Zealand is not classical democracy. It's a version of the Westminster parliamentary system, which is something else again.
Despite - or perhaps because of - having grown up inside a so-called democracy, everyone thinks they have a handle on it. Even though many have never, strictly speaking, been taught the distinctions of the ideology.
Just because you give every person a vote doesn't mean they are able to exercise it in a truly democratic manner.
Now, a representative legislature working to absolute majority rule may - as here - be accepted as a valid form of democracy but it falls a long way short of government "by the people, for the people" and its inherent ideal of consensus.
At base representative majority rule (especially when wedded to political parties) has more affiliation with the unilateral powers exercised in an oligarchy than with anything dreamt up by the Greeks.
But somewhere along the way we got it into our collective heads that might means right.
And swallowed the big lie that rule by the biggest stick equals democracy. It does not.
Let's consider what "democracy" actually means. Here's the Collins English Dictionary definition (my emphasis):
Government by the people {u} or {/u} their elected representatives; a political or social unit governed ultimately by {u} all {/u} its members; the practice or spirit of social equality; a social condition of classlessness and equality; the common people, especially as a political force.
Now tell me where, in any of that, it says anything about 51 per cent being able to lord it over 49 per cent.
Just the opposite; because true democracy is about the rule of the masses - the "common people" - not about parties or cabinets or self-serving individuals conjuring makeshift majorities.
Ah, but it's implied, I hear you say. By whom? Not the Greeks; their democracy was a direct consensus process. And they did, after all, invent it.
Besides, I would have thought the emphasis on "all the people in equality" clear enough; that implies holistic decision-making, not simple majority.
It was the English who managed to twist it about and come up with the Westminster monarch-plus-representative system we employ: something that gave common folk the idea they could rule themselves without (or so it was envisaged) actually giving them the power.
That, of course, was reserved for the nominal elite; the model was simply a way of making landed gentry respectably "common".
Business as usual, then. And, naturally, the system was adopted throughout the world-spanning British Empire.
I raise this now because this is referendum year, when we are to be asked what sort of system we wish to be governed by. To set the scene for that debate; because surely before you make changes you must understand what you actually have as opposed to what you think you have. Otherwise you argue in a vacuum.
As for the narrow range of options we're to be asked to decide I suggest to you that regardless of any other consideration the aim we should adopt as our target is to become more genuinely democratic.
Meaning every option should be examined in that light. Does it engender greater classlessness? Does it move with or against the practice and spirit of social equality?
There will be arguments propounded for all sides of each option; my endeavour as a sideline commentator will be to appraise them to assist you to make up your own mind.
However here's one observation in relation to where we are at right now: Jim Anderton, Rodney Hide, Hone Harawira.
Three extremely diverse characters independently elected under MMP who in theory would also have been elected under FPP - because they won their electorate. But if we still had the old predominantly two-party system, would any have been?
They present a wide enough range for everyone to love one or other; but if you would champion one's rights to be an MP, then you must accept the others in like reason.
Be honest with yourself when you think on that - because that {u} is {/u} democracy.
That's the right of it.
Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.