I like how your country handles political donations better than the US. Like all reasonable individuals, I don't think elections should be preemptively paid for by an establishment that has profited off of them for decades. I'm not sure how long your multi party system is going to last. Yours is a very young country, and power tends to settle after a while. I wouldn't be surprised if your parties began to consolidate themselves. If one party in particular started gaining inertia and mass it would start sucking in similar parties. But who knows, maybe the measures you have in place will prevent corruption, but that's no easy feat. If there's a loophole to be found, it will be, and the more complicated the system is the more loopholes will come with that.
First of all my country isn't young, it is about 5.5 times older than US. In other words only the current set of legal paradigms is relatively new, but some of the active political parties in play go all the way back to 19th century (if not further in certain forms) Just if legal order got changed that doesn't necessarily mean that new parties are created. Also this can simply mean that some parties got "unbanned" and they can now operate freely once again. Or people from old parties simply made the new ones when the legal order got changed. But to understand this you must go outside of strict American way of thinking about politics. Actually every other democracy on the continent is multiparty democracy, therefore what I said is nothing that much out of the ordinary. Therefore the US is the one that is anomaly in the regard. Because your system is built to create air-tight establishment on the long run.
As a matter of fact our political spectrum is diversifying instead of homogenizing over the last few election cycles. However here there is no establishment in American sense because in order to rule parties need to form coalitions. What means that in one election cycle the ruling combination of parties is A,B,D,F,H, in the second is B,C,D,H,F , in the third is A,C,D,E,F ... etc. Therefore in every cycle you have different combination every time and this fluidity makes it impossible to solidify some kind of a air-tight establishment through legal politics. Sure, it is possible to game the system to some degree but no where near as much as in US. Where you can't punish one party without boosting the other one. While here you can phase parties out, when I was in high school one centrist party in my parliament was the largest one there. While today this same party has only 2 seats. Since various other parties took their seats and voters, because they weren't that good in governing. Plus our numerous changes of political/legal system also kinda made sure that solidified permanent establishment can't be created, since people are used to more fluid political landscape. Here throwing the constitution out of the window in nothing new, it is centuries old practice. What ironically can lead to making sure that the new constitution is always more up to date.
Plus we have snap elections that are major deal in all this. In other words if either political parties or people see and decide that current administration isn't really working we are going to snap elections. Which will change the combination of parties in the mix. Few year back one of our administrations went in flames this way only after a few months in the office. What is excellent since living with that train wreck for 4 years would be objective pain for the whole country. However this way this got changed and we got a decent new administration that did it's 4 years in full. I mean here election campaigns formally last about 6 weeks with a month or two of "foreplay ", therefore the whole thing isn't such drama in which everyone in the end loses both focus and sanity. Plus this is why we can have snap election, since the process is fast. I mean there are modern media and people in general know where each party stands on issues. Therefore there is no need to make super long pointless campaigns out of this, which is exactly why it matters that the constitution is up to date.
I mean this system will probably never be 100% flawless but it is relatively decent system that provides governing which can be trusted in general. Some places around the continent have sophisticated this even further but we are learning from them, this is basically exactly why we are diversifying lately. But if we are going to be honest I am much more skeptical about the media then politicians since that is perhaps the biggest potential problem in the whole mix.
But more to the point, I wasn't talking about systems at all, but people. And maybe we fundamentally disagree on this as well. I consider self interest a universal human principal- perhaps even the bedrock of reason itself. I don't think it is a bad thing, especially if it's understood that working together on things is often directly self interested as well. Doing the right thing on a moral level is self interested, as having a sense of honor and integrity is good not only for the psyche, but also the surrounding community, which again benefits the self that is living within it. It's easy to parse out seemingly selfless action without considering it in the wider more selfish context, but I think it's important (always) to be contextually thorough. When it comes to politics and more specifically politicians, we have taken a step away from average individuals operating in their own self interests, towards individuals operating in their own self interests who also want power over others. And this is the game they play. Gaining power over their political rivals is just practice for the ultimate role of having power over the populations of their respective jurisdictions, the means of which are always the same- lie to people about whatever they want to hear. Do you have any examples of politicians who haven't done this? Or more importantly, who haven't done this and succeeded anyway? I can't think of a worse type of person myself than someone who would be drawn to politics- especially the type of person that has deceived themselves, usually via a martyr messianic complex, that they are the "good guy," sent from above to bring peace and order to the galaxy.
I gave you plenty of examples of individuals that simply aren't the greedy politician from your talking points, therefore I was talking about in individuals as well. While for me you view of the politicians is simply too black and white (what is just black in your case). But I will go deeper into this and say that this is exactly why for me well socialized medicine is so important. Because that policy makes healthcare available no matter what is going in your life. What in the end means that you don't have landscape where each life indirectly has a label how much it actually costs. What then means that you are rising generations that don't see life in the bottom line strictly through costs, since they were never really programmed that in the most basic foundation life has a price. Plus this makes growing up much less stressful and therefore you have less mental illnesses all over the map and people are less in pathological hurry to get money at all cost (crime and fraud included). Since they were thought by experience that you can always get the chance to be physically fixed no matter what is going on (the same goes for the rest of your family, friends etc.). While what you are describing is typical colonialism and eventually post-colonialism, where life is something that is traded for money, perhaps even in the most concrete sense possible. What means that whole generations will be risen in the climate where you have to take your share and your spot with force. What in combination with your political system creates politicians as you see them, know them and define them. However this simply isn't set in stone. As I said a number of times your culture has a problem in telling the difference between freedom and being on your own. What are simply two different things once you scratch the surface a little bit better.
