Comment by digitalPhonix
7 hours ago
Why? If they’re democratically voted, what’s wrong with it?
Australia has no term limits and has famously had the longest serving prime minister (12 years) followed by extremely short terms. All seemed to represent the general will of the population.
Modern democracy is not about enforcing the populates will whatever that is. It’s about limiting tyranny.
I wish Australia had term limits for all politicians, and not just for the PM. Term limits prevents people becoming career politicians, which i think would be a good thing.
The argument against aggressive term limits that I’ve read: there are many people making a career in politics as a whole—lobbyists, influence groups, party committees, etc. They have a huge advantage over the term-limited elected politician.
I’m not a political junkie but that makes sense to me. The critters who get your vote are just part of the system that runs the place.
Sheeeeeeeeeeit
Mark Rutte, Netherlands, 14 years prime minister, four terms in office. It is hard to say if he represented the general will of the population given that his party, the liberal-right VVD favors the more well-to-do part of the population. I think many voters voted for him as a trustworthy face and friendly, amicable man. Vote for the personality. He was also characterized as Mr Tefal for his ability to make nothing stick to him in terms of criticism, and utterly pragmatic, denouncing vision. As a result the big problems and areas where reform were most needed, were always pushed to the future.
You might say he introduced a kind of populism, where politicians only care about the next election round and their reputation, to the cost of important decision-making and long-term thinking. Unfortunately this is kind of a working strategy, a weakness of democracy, where the current centre-right government is struggling with all the aggravated problems not dealt with in the past, and the voters think "well, perhaps we have to vote VVD again where these problems didn't exist", or vote more right-wing by populism that makes immigration the cause of all problems.
I think the real weakness of democracy is that governments can’t make difficult changes. The current government wanted to but both the right and the left did not accept those changes. Similar story as France, a big need to change, but everybody expects others to pay, not themselves.
Today, it’s always either the fault of the other party (who never had a real chance of making big changes), the rich (but if you tax them too much they leave and you’re left with no economy, see France), or the foreigners.