Early voting for the disengaged

I note that one of the more significant issues to come out of the recent Victorian State election in Australia (apart from the landslide Labor win and its consequences at the Federal level) has been the number of people who did not wait for polling day to cast their votes.

Some 1.4 million voters had performed their constitutional duty before the actual election date on November 24 — out of 4.2 million who were enrolled.  This continues a trend in other recent State elections and in the last Federal poll in 2016.

Because voting is compulsory in Australia, with fines for those who fail to vote without a very good reason, successive Governments have found ways of making it easier to cast ballots, mainly through the establishment of numerous pre-poll stations operating for up to a month before the actual election.

The system was set up in 1984 for those who would be physically unable to reach a polling station on election day, but with no way of checking it became obvious that vast numbers were using this as an excuse and more recently restrictions have been quietly dropped.  

This has led to the various parties wondering how they should run their campaigns in the future — what is the point of leaving juicy, vote-catching policies to the last week when half the electorate will have already made its decision.

Campaign ‘launches’, often left to the week before polling day in the hope of getting a late ‘bounce’ are being re-thought. One researcher has attacked the whole concept of pre-poll voting, saying that it breaks with a key tenant of democracy — that everyone should vote at the same time “as this confers equality on the contest”.

My view is that all this is a fuss about nothing, because in more than a half century of reporting and studying elections I have found that up to 60 per cent of any electorate rarely, if ever, change their votes.

When asked their views, these rusted on supporters of whichever party usually resort to ancient and questionable slogans: “Labor is the party for the working man”; “business always does better under the Liberals”; Nationals have the farmers’ interests at heart”.

Almost certainly it is these voters who are making increasing use of the pre-poll system. Their minds have been made up, not just for the current campaign, but for all campaigns in which they have ever taken part.

To them, the issues are irrelevant and they see no reason to waste their Saturday leisure time waiting in line to cast their vote.

They form the solid platform from which their parties launch their arguments to capture a majority of the remaining 40 per cent.    

In the usually stable Western democracies it is this 40 per cent of swing voters that determine who governs, and it is this 40 per cent who are most likely to follow the issues and the policies, saving their vote until late, perhaps even until polling day itself.

What is happening in Australia is a simple evolution of the way voters engage, or choose not to engage, with the democratic system. There will be those who find it deplorable, yet there is little any party, or Government can do about it.     

Last chance to halt the Brexit bulldozer

As the United Kingdom’s Brexit process stumbles on, Prime Minister Theresa May is increasingly falling back on Trump-style nationalist rhetoric in support of the deal she has negotiated to take her country out of the European Union.

The arrangement will “strengthen the borders”; “give us back our laws and control over our finances” and “end free movement, once and for all”.

Her explosive reference to EU nationals, lawfully and productively in the UK, as “queue jumpers” was too much for some, with Scottish Chief Minister, Nicola Sturgeon describing the reference as “offensive and disgraceful”.

There is no doubt that nothing short of her removal will sway the Prime Minister from her course. May is blind to everything other than her place in history as the Prime Minister who led her nation out of European entanglements.

Whether she believes this is best for the nation is irrelevant. To quote her: “The people have spoken in the 2016 referendum and we must deliver the verdict of the people.”

She, along with all the other dogged Brexiteers, endlessly quote that referendum where the vote was 51.9 per cent against 48.1 per cent in favour of leaving. Those raw figures are the only things they care to remember about the process.

Not the lies (the promise that £350 million will return to the National Health Service after Brexit — not a penny will come to the NHS as a result of leaving the EU).

Not the misrepresentations (the anonymous United Kingdom Independence Party official who tweeted: “We just have to send a resignation letter to Brussels and we will be out in a week”).

Not the allegations of misuse of data and other cheating that could well have skewed the result (Cambridge Analytica).

Not the allegations of funding violations by various Leave campaign organisations, including mysterious donations that had their origins overseas.

With opinion polls showing a swing in favour of remaining in the EU, the Brexiteers cling to the 2016 result like a drowning man clutching at a straw, yet that referendum has proved to be rotten to its core — a victory only for tricksters and manipulators.

Even if the result were not flawed, there would still be a case for a second vote, given the thinness of the majority and the fact that so many of the dire consequences of leaving (dismissed in 2016 as ‘Project Fear’) are now there for all to see.

In the face of this the Brexit camp has resorted to the lowest form of bully-boy intimidation, threatening “blood in the streets” if its aims are thwarted.   

Finally, if Brexit is bulldozed through who will lead the United Kingdom into the Promised Land? Opportunist May? Boris Johnson? David Davis? Or will it be Jeremy Corbyn’s version of a workers paradise?

Or the worst nightmare of all, the Latin quoting Minister for the 18^th Century, Jacob Rees-Mogg.

It is late in the day for some mature refection, but not too late. The United Kingdom remains a parliamentary democracy and it is time for parliamentarians to put aside party loyalties and allow the people a final and decisive vote.

Another messy Middle East mistake

Almost a century ago Mahatma Gandhi railed against the victorious World War I powers for carving up the Ottoman Empire.

This, he said, was in contravention of promises made to Indian Muslims in return for them joining British Imperial forces in the conflict.

Gandhi was protesting the first in what was to be a catalogue of duplicity, mismanagement and irresponsibility characterising the West’s involvement in the Middle East, leading to the maelstrom that is the region today.

As a result there are many who concede there can never be a solution in this troubled region without the cauterisation of some cataclysmic, all-out conflict. That doomsday scenario has been brought closer by the reckless, shoot-from-the-hip diplomacy from the current Administration in Washington.

President Donald Trump’s decision to move the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and his eager courting of the despotic Saudi Arabian regime has removed the United States from any semblance of neutrality in the region.

It is difficult to see how any future Administration can ever make up the ground and play the honest broker again.

The biggest misstep has been the decision to resume the confrontation with Iran, all the more tragic because it seems to have been done not for any reason other than to negate the major foreign policy initiative of Trump’s despised predecessor, Barack Obama.

The best hope of bringing Iran back into the international fold was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as the 2015 nuclear deal, which exchanged Iran’s nuclear ambitions for sanctions relief.

Trump castigated the JCPOA from the onset of his presidency, describing it as the worst the US had ever signed up for — something which seemed incomprehensible, not only to Teheran but to the other partners, the European Union, Russia and China, who thought it was working quite well.

Before Trump’s precipitous action it seemed there was a chance of genuine reform in the Islamic Republic. In late 2017 protests against harsh economic conditions spread throughout the country, constituting the greatest challenge to the theocratic regime in recent years.

While the crackdown eventually turned bloody, the events were widely covered on State television and the voices of reformist lawmakers were heard.

Washington’s reimposition of sanctions threw a lifeline to Iran’s hard-line elements opposed to any lessening of tensions with the West.

There is nothing like an external threat to unite a country and Trump’s actions have brought Iranians into the streets in their tens of thousands to support the Government.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, initially seen as a moderate, is now firmly in the camp of those who now describe the US as a duplicitous Great Satan. The threat that Teheran will now push forward with its nuclear and missile development has been voiced and remains real.

Most observers now believe nothing short of military intervention will bring about regime change in Iran — a possibility that is horrifying Trump’s military advisers and likely to result in the end-game conflict mentioned above.

If Iran was a significant threat to regional stability before, it is a much greater one, on a far wider stage, now.

Medieval thinking in a modern world

The grisly murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi focused world attention, at least for a while, on the ruthless Saudi Arabian regime, creating outrage and disgust around the world.

Yet for the various agencies that have monitored this nation’s human rights record over many years, it came as no surprise.

At the same time as the debate over Khashoggi raged, an Indonesian migrant domestic worker, Tuti Tursilawati, was executed in the Saudi city of Ta’if after being charged with the murder of the man who employed her.

In her defence she said that the man had tried to rape her and that after killing him in self-defence she escaped, only to be gang raped by a number of men before she was caught by the police.

It is impossible to ascertain the full facts of this incident, but as far as the authorities were concerned there was no need. The word of a foreigner was never going to be believed. Case proved and her death was inevitable.

Then there was the barbarous method of execution — beheading, and the failure to even notify the Indonesian Government, which had made repeated representations on Tursilawati’s behalf, that the execution was going to take place.

This is no isolated incident. At least three other foreign domestic servants have been executed in recent times, and the Saudis routinely do so without informing either families or the home Government in total violation of its own laws.

It will happen again and again as there are currently at least 18 Indonesian migrant workers on death row, many facing charges that would be laughed out of Western courts.

Given the way justice works in the kingdom, there is little hope for any non-Saudi national who falls foul of the country’s laws.

This latest incident might not have come to international attention at all had it not been for Indonesian representatives of the aid agency CARE, who went public with their condemnation.

CARE’s Indonesian Director, Wahyu Susilo urged President Joko Widodo to bar Indonesians going to Saudi as domestic servants.

Sadly, this will probably not happen, just as Khashoggi’s murder will not stop Western nations, principally the United States and the United Kingdom, from cutting or even downgrading their ties with Riyadh.

Oil still speaks with a loud voice in a world that is a long way from being able to do without it. The Saudis have used this leverage in the past and will do so again without compulsion.

Saudi Arabia is an hereditary dictatorship, based on the divine right of the ruler and the suppression of the ruled.

Its enormous wealth has turned it into one of the most dangerous entities imaginable in the modern world — a state whose thinking is firmly based in the Middle Ages, yet with a 21^st century arsenal of sophisticated weapons at its disposal.

Such a regime is impervious to modern reasoning and rejects humanitarian norms. It is a threat to its own region and a destabilising influence in the world at large.

Its atrocities are only likely to multiply in the face of weak protests from Western democracies intent on keeping the Saudi despots onside.   

Toxic air threatens our future

Amid all the problems currently afflicting humanity, a World Health Organization (WHO) report on toxic pollution in the atmosphere did not get the coverage it deserved.

What reports I saw rightly took up the point that around 93 per cent of the world’s children under the age of 15 are breathing air that is so polluted it is putting their health and development at risk.

Anyone who has spent time in one of India’s major cities will know this only too well, and especially at this time of the year. Face masks are worn outside by all but the foolhardy, eyes sting and streets ring with the sound of hawking and coughing as people try to remove the mess from their throats and lungs.

It is worse at this time of the year when farmers traditionally burn off the remains of their crops to prepare for the new season, which means that not even rural areas are safe.

This toxic smog is a killer — the WHO estimates it kills seven million people worldwide each year and the number is rising.

While the immediate effects on health are distressing and terrible, I believe the long term impact could be far worse — a danger to the structure of civilisation itself.

WHO says that children are the worst affected by the ever rising levels of pollution because their respiratory systems are still developing and they breath faster than adults, therefor inhale more gunk — and also because they are closer to the ground where pollution tends to settle.

All this at a time when their bodies and brains are at the most vulnerable.

The Director of the Social Determinants of Health at WHO, Maria Neira, puts it most starkly when she says air pollution is “stunting children’s brains”.

“It is affecting their health in more ways that we expected,” Neira says.

This was reinforced by the Director General of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who says polluted air is poisoning millions of children and ruining their lives.

“This is inexcusable. Every child should be able to breathe clean air so they can grow and fulfil their full potential,” he said.

What if they don’t? What if our own destruction of the environment; our denial of clean air to our young, damages their mental and motor development, as most scientists agree it will.

What is the future for the human race if subsequent generations are so intellectually damaged that they cannot function in a society increasingly reliant on people to run ever more sophisticated technology?

At best this will produce a hopeless and possibly savage underclass as the divide between those with the means to escape the effects of toxic air and those who are permanently damaged by it becomes an unbridgeable chasm.

At worst a living hell that will make dystopian nightmares like The Handmaid’s Tale and The Hunger Games seem like visions of the Promised Land.

Are there solutions? Of course, there always are, but only in a world where international cooperation is put before narrow national and sectional interests and there is a universal acceptance that some must sacrifice for the good of all.

Unfortunately this is a world increasingly distant in a political climate which is becoming almost as toxic as the air many of us breathe.