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Tropica Today

Conservatives unveil manifesto a year prior to election

Takutai Tonga - July 5627 - Following Labour managing to elect the first President under the new constitution, Rachel Maata, on the third ballot of the joint session of Parliament, the Conservative Party has been going through a bit of soul searching. Leader Andrew Rangi has been going around the country attempting to sell a pseudo-manifesto, Tropica on Track, that the Tories released in June that’s outlining their promises if they win the election scheduled for June next year. The key promises are somewhat out of the box, but are not that far out either.

The first promise surrounds the electoral system, which has been ranted about by many a Tory MNA over the past two and a half years. The Tories propose the replacement of the FPTP-Supplementary system (as it’s been dubbed by the psephology blogs), with a Closed-List Proportional Representation system with levelling seats by the 5632 election, or, at the minimum, a switch to a system closer to mixed-member proportional, including thresholds, rather than the threshold-less system that struggles to create true PR in most cases. 

Second, an unexpectedly progressive idea of closing the gender pay gap in public service jobs, with a catch. All public servants will have a base wage, regardless of gender, equivalent to the current average wage for Female public servants (roughly T$56,000 per annum). The stated aim of this is to bring down the pay gap and attempt to make private businesses do the same, but given the final promise, it’s more likely to show that cutting the public service down to bare bones by subtly forcing people to resign and not replacing them can deliver a budget surplus, which Labour has written off at least until FY36. However, Labour has copied this promise, with the crucial difference that the universal base annual wage will be T$60,000 per annum, in the middle ground of the current average wage for male and female public servants. So if anything, this could lose more votes than it gains. 

The final, and most controversial promise, is a complete and total reform of the welfare department. The Tories are suggesting the following are scrapped:

• 90% of Disability benefits, with all but the most severe disability ‘categories’ (that the party has drawn up based off some decades old research paper that they’re treating as the latest and greatest), having no benefits attached if they disrupt work.
  
• The section of TropiCare that focuses on attempting to make crucial medication cost as low as possible, possibly putting millions of low-income Tropicans at risk
  
• Anything ‘free’ or ‘bulk-billed’ apart from vaccinations for under 16s and testing for cancerous growths for all ages.
  

As anyone might expect, this last one has completely screwed any chance of the good ideas that the first two promises have of being covered in the media.

Various commentators have argued that this is Rangi’s last attempt at getting himself a shot at the Prime Ministership, given he was already languishing in the polls before this, but the early manifesto has made things worse,as the Conservatives have plummeted from their somewhat decent but also somewhat poor 28% average to 24%, most of that lost vote splitting between the three ethnic parties (Pati Mātou, Pa’ina Kanakan, and Pati Teoan Tagata), as well as the small-l liberal Democrats. The Tama Labour Government is looking all but certain to win a second term in office, sitting at 36% of the vote in the latest polls, which would translate to probably close to an outright majority on FPTP seats alone, Although the Greens will probably be needed to ensure stability.