On Candidates and Party Platforms

The proposal to provide for formal announcements of party platforms at each party's discretion, and to ensure that telephone calls can be checked for authenticity does not, of course, guarantee that candidates for office will act as they claim. Forming judgments about the honesty and reliability of political candidates is the task of the elector.

No doubt the candidates for office will be presented in a favorable light by their supporters; however, the question remains : Are these claims true? What is the public record? What were the choices available to a given candidate at the time, and what choice was actually made?

This approach to the rôle of the elector requires some investigation, but the wise candidate will provide voting records and reasons for the choices that were made in some suitably transparent form. In fact, a preliminary statement by candidates, with guides to further information, could become a second part of the party platform.¹

Once again, the most effective way to address entrenched and interested deceit in political campaigns is to make available a true and transparent account of the issues. And a good way of launching this kind of account is to present the voting record of the candidate for office.

Further parliamentary activities can be presented as well; for instance, (1) the parliamentary Committees on which the candidate has served; (2) the line of argument the candidate presented in Committee; and (3) the decisions that were made in these Committees.

Or again, which questions were posed by the candidate in Question Period, including the subject at issue; the reply made by the Government; the response of the candidate, if one was possible; and the eventual vote, if there was one on the subject.

If such an energetic enquiry by the elector is a 'counsel of perfection', it is nonetheless a useful guide to the kinds of questions that are worth asking. For the correct answers would reveal the candidate's tendency to conform, or not, to the party platform.

In this case conformity is important because the platform is supposed to be the true description of the interests and consequent courses of action to be pursued by each party. In turn, the interests and prospective actions reflect the values of any political party, and are therefore the ultimate grounds for soliciting the support of the electors.

Finally, there was published some years ago a book on philosophy entitled, Clarity is Not Enough. Clarity is however a very good start, and has the advantage of promoting honesty in political claims by revealing what is actually being said.

Montréal 23\27 March 2012