Paradise Preoccupied

Okay, I don’t have all the numbers in front of me, but that really doesn’t matter. The meat in the burger is that nothing has changed. Yes, there are a few new names and faces, but the proportions of SPPF and SNP stay exactly the same in the National Assembly … 23 seats for the SPPF and 11 for the SNP, including the unelected “proportional representation” seats.

SNP lost in two districts they’d previously held, and won in two that had been SPPF. (Bernard Georges won by a margin of 4 votes in Les Mammelles, so it was, as it always is, a case of every vote counting.)

In my village, Baie Lazare, the SNP candidate lost by close to 300 votes, with the breakdown something like 53% to 47% The biggest SPPF win was Praslin, where they got 75%.

The turnout was less than for the presidential election in July, but still over 75%, which is pretty darned good compaired to many countries. There were more spoiled ballots, most likely protest votes, than before.

The polling went calmly, and there was no violence. The obligatory driving around the island by winners waving flags happened on Sunday, and there were no problems there, either, as far as I’ve been able to determine.

This is probably a good place for me to start my campaign to get “none of the above” on every ballot in the world. If “none of the above” gets the most votes, the powers that be MUST go out and find new people or new ideas or whatever is being voted on until they come up with something or someone people really WANT to vote for. It seems totally undemocratic to have options dictated the way they are now, and if there was a way for the people to actually check a box that said, “We’re not happy with the choices you’ve given us,” then perhaps the smorgasbord on offer would get a whole lot more appetizing from the get-go.

I’m not talking here about Seychelles … in fact I’m thinking much more about how many times I voted in the States by grudgingly ticking alongside what I sorely hoped was the lesser of two evils. The few times I was excited about a candidate stand out because that happened so rarely.

Just a thought that’s been rolling around my head for the past, oh, 40 years or so.