Look before you leap

Dear editor:
In the coming referendum, it is important that we vote to keep our current (FPP) electoral system.
I believe the proposed MMP system has several disadvantages and is bad for Ontario. It shifts power from the voters to the parties and party leaders, and Ontario voters have little enough power as it is.
With MMP, the 39 MPPs appointed from party lists will be accountable to the party which put them on the list, not to any particular voters. I think this will come to be used as a reward system for longtime party workers, like the Senate is.
One important advantage of our current system (FPP) is that it is relatively easy for the voters to change the governing party, and thus to change the direction of government—steering it left or right as desired.
Under the MMP system, voters lose a lot of this control. Most governments would be coalitions formed by negotiations between the parties after the election is over.
The party with the most votes is just as likely to find itself in opposition as in government, contrary to the wishes of the largest group of voters.
For example, had MMP been in place when Bob Rae won a majority, he would have had only 38 percent of the seats. It is very likely that David Peterson would have made a deal with the PCs and stayed on as premier, with the NDP in opposition.
The NDP are in favour of this?? It would give them more seats in the short-term, but it also would almost guarantee that they would never be more than a junior partner in a coalition government.
If this is what the NDP really wants, they should just join the Liberals.
Look before you leap. Keep FPP.
Sincerely,
Brian Williams,
Emo, Ont.