Step back a pace and there’s an uncanny coincidence that we shouldn’t but notice. Two political systems, different challenges, but tricky ones, nonetheless.
The event that didn’t happen (according to China)
Today, China tries its best not to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests. Over here, we’re all familiar with the video footage of a the lone protestor in front of the tank (reproduced by Balakov below).
Tiananmen Square protestor in Lego
(Photo by Balakov on Flickr, reproduced under Creative Commons licence)
China’s attempt to place a blanket ban on coverage of this event (it’s even blocked Twitter) is somewhat understandable. It simply wants to avoid what it sees as an unfortunate incident in history. And to an extent it has succeeded. I was surprised this morning during breakfast with Li, when the video footage of the man in front of the tank came up on the news, she said that she had never seen it before. She was even quite shocked by it. But, she also mentioned that Chinese TV had presented some much more gruesome pictures of students injuring soldiers in the event, which I don’t recollect ever seeing. Just goes to show what different media like to show.
Anyway, today, China is doing its best not to mark the event. And some of the CCP supporters are putting in their own efforts to prevent western media from covering it in an umbrella censorship. No, literally! They’re sticking umbrellas in the way of TV cameras as Shanghaiist reports.
But in all seriousness, it’s true to say that everyone has their own point of view on the incident. Personally, I’m of the opinion that this needs to be let go by most people. What happened twenty years ago was a defining point of history, which did change the face of Chinese politics, even if no one will ever publicly admit it.
European Elections
But China isn’t the only political system that has something to contend with today. In the UK, we are holding elections for the European Parliament.
The European Parliament is made up elected members from across Europe. The UK has about 10% of the seats, and MEPs are selected by way of an election using proportional representation. This means that unlike the UK parliament, MEPs are selected on the basis of the proportion of votes their party gets. In domestic elections, MPs are selected by whoever wins in their own constituency in a “first-past-the-post” style election. The net effect is that the European elections mean that smaller parties have a higher chance of representation.
But the real issue here is voter apathy. Few people, especially those supporting larger parties, are less likely to vote. This means smaller parties are likely to get a larger representation in Europe, and the fear is that the likes of the far right British National Party have a higher chance of getting seats.
There is a campaign going on to get voters on their feet, but if this fails, a big question will re-arise: will we ever get the majority people to vote ever again.
And taking into account both the Chinese and European systems, is there really a political system that really represents the views of the people?
