Quote of the week

Israel has knowingly and deliberately continued to act in defiance of the [International Court of Justice] Order. In addition to causing the death by starvation of Palestinian children in babies, Israel has also continued to kill approximately 4,548 Palestinian men, women and children since 26 January 2024, and to wound a further 7,556, bringing the grim totals to 30,631 killed and 72,043 injured. An unknown number of bodies remain buried under the rubble. 1.7 million Palestinians remain displaced — many of them permanently, Israel having damaged or destroyed approximately 60 per cent of the housing stock in Gaza. Approximately 1.4 million people are squeezed into Rafah — which Israel has stated it intends to attack imminently. Israel’s destruction of the Palestinian healthcare system has also continued apace, with ongoing, repeated attacks on hospitals, healthcare, ambulances and medics. Israel has also continued to conduct widespread attacks on schools, mosques, businesses and entire villages and areas.

Republic of South Africa Urgent Request to the International Court of Justice for Additional Measures South Africa v Israel
22 March 2007

Should law regulate political parties?

A thoughtful reader is rather unenthusiastic about my proposal that legislation should be adopted to regulate the internal party democracy of political parties. He/she claims that “such regulations will always have a tendency to regulate in favour of the existing order, for the simple reason that they’ll be drafted by the dominant political parties” then continues:

And you should know why the German regulations are a bad example of your case: the German political laws (5% minimum vote before election, etc) are there to exclude the possibility of another Nazi party emerging. The laws in Germany aren’t there for any good constitutional reason, they are there because of a political reflex against certain forms of extremism. No, that doesn’t mean they are a bad thing, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the constitutional validity of enforcing democracy in political parties by legal means.

I have three quick reactions to this argument. First, in a democracy the dominant political party will inevitably legislate in a way that will advantage them, but when there is a strong civil society and real contestation for power a dominant party will think twice before adopting legislation that would obviously rig the system.

Second, even where the rules favour the dominant party it is always better to have regulation that not having regulation at all because without any regulation the dominant party who can distribute patronage and has wide state powers, can easily go wayward. In any case a party like the ANC who experienced severe upheaval in the preparation of its election lists before the last local government election, may come to see the benefits of legislation that regulate the selection of candidates.

Lastly, Germany is not the only country who has adopted party laws. Other countries like Mexico has also done so and did so in reaction to a long history of corruption in the politics of that country. In a country with pure proportional representation a party law can help to stop the internal party corruption in the compilation of party election lists.

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