By IRNA,
London : As leaders of main British parties are struggling to form a coalition government following the May 6 elections, voters who believe the current electoral system is not just and fair have formed a campaign with “purple” as their colour of protest.
Such campaigns have already been formed in major British constituencies as London, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol and Scotland. They have been organised by an electoral reform campaign organisation known as “Take Back Parliament” (TBP) after the results of the 2010 general elections indicated that the Liberal Democrat Party secured only nine per cent of the parliamentary seats despite winning 23 per cent of the votes while the Labour gained 42 per cent of the seats with 29 per cent of the votes—very near to Lib Dems’ votes.
The TBP organised thousands of purple-wearing demonstrators yesterday in London and across Britain to protest at the country’s electoral system and results of the “unfair” elections. They have chosen purple as the official colour of this campaign because it symbolises a large movement named “Suffragette” in the 1900s fighting for women’s suffrage in Britain.
Under the present first-past-the-post election system in the UK, the party with the majority of the seats and not the largest number of votes will have to form the government. Under this system, the Conservatives took 36 per cent of national vote ended up with 306 of the 650 parliamentary seats while Labour won 29 per cent of the votes and 258 seats and the Lib Dems could only get 57 seats despite a slight margin of votes with the Labour, winning 23 per cent of the vote.
This system has been criticised by many campaign groups and even some politicians. The “Where’s my vote? Manchester Purple Protest” campaign is one such group which has described the British electoral system as a “democratic travesty”.
“No matter what the colour of your political stripes, the current system is a democratic travesty and can’t continue. This election campaign has seen repeated promises of “change” and a “new politics” from politicians keen to show they understand the public’s anger at a corrupt and broken political system,” the group said in a statement.
“But unless we make clear we are serious about the need for reform, politicians will assume they can get back to the same old politics…This must be the last election under our broken system,” the Where’s my vote? Manchester Purple Protest said.
Earlier the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) announced in a statement that the next British parliament is “unrepresentative” of the British people.
“A General Election should deliver a parliament that represents the public. But what we have is a lottery where Labour can be only 5 per cent ahead of the Lib Dems but walk away with five times as many seats,” said ERS chief executive Ken Ritchie.
Also, more than 20,000 British voters and supporters of the Take Back Parliament campaign have signed a petition, criticising that “this Parliament does not represent us and we demand fair votes now.”