Letter to Citizen

Methinks the letter was too long. Here it is now.

Dear Editor,

The NO campaign's hopes lie in their belief that we the people do not have faith in each other to shape our destiny together.

They want us to have no faith in the 94-8 near consensus of ordinary citizens picked randomly from each riding of Ontario. They want us give no credence to a proposal that was based on 8 months of studying and consulting Ontarians. They give us the message that politicians are just plain bad, so we don't need more of them, even though Ontario is considered underrepresented already. Of course these are the same politicians who are the local representatives so 'accountable' we can picture them painting our fence. Are the bad guys among the other 102 MPP's we can do absolutely nothing about in the current system? List MPP's are labeled unaccountable before they've even had a chance. The NO's underestimate your ability to understand that in MMP you have the power to vote them out. They predict back-room politics as the method of nominating the list, even though the recommendation clearly states that the process must be entirely transparent and published before the writ is dropped. They crave majorities and fear coalitions, but how many Conservatives are happy with the Liberals 70% seat majority earned with 46.5%? How did Liberals feel about the NDP's 37.6% majority government years ago? If we think about it, we might be better off sharing power according to how the population votes. The population works together quite well every day, despite our differences.

The NO campaign believes you cannot understand a ballot where you have the choice to vote for a party and a local candidate and that the folks at Elections Ontario won't be able to count them. The NO campaign doesn't respect your struggle in our system if you have to punish a good local representative because their party messed up. The NO campaign actually distrusts voters so much, that they can picture 3 out of every 100 people at your neighbourhood poll voting for a Muslim party or the White Supremacists.

It all reminds one of when women got the vote. The NO side of that time was full of all kinds of fears we'd find amusing today. They said that women voting would invite foreign aggression and weaken national defence. They said that if women voted they'd stop marrying and having kids, and the human race would die out.

We could take a break from the political hacks and pundits on either side, take a breath, clear our minds and consider the recommendation and its credibility. Then let's judge for ourselves.

Arif Jinha
Carleton Place