|
Of freedom and politics...
|
Blog For Free!
Archives
Home
2004 July
2004 June
2004 April
2004 March
2004 February
2004 January
2003 December
2003 November
My Links
The Onion
Western University
FM96 Top 30
Quotation Center
tBlog
My Profile
Send tMail
My tFriends
My Images
Sponsored
Blog
|
| Of freedom and politics... |
| 06.18.04 (12:43 pm) [edit] |
[i]Your mercedes won't start, yeah that's a crying shame...
I guess 90K a year buys nothing but complaints.
The people in my neighborhood think that I'm a threat,
while the boss gets richer they get deeper in debt!
[b]Gob ~ Give Up The Grudge[/i][/b]
For those of you who don't know, Canada is mere days away from a Federal election, meaning that the leadership of our country is up for grabs in what is essentially a two way race. While there are three major political parties, the Conservatives, the Liberals and the New Democrats, only the Conservatives and Liberals have a chance of forming the next government. The New Democrats are considered too left wing for the majority of Canadians and have suffered of late in politics at both the Federal and Provincial level. The Conservatives and the Liberals are currently neck-in-neck in the polls.
The focus on Parties during this election has cast doubt lately upon the idea which our democracy, and indeed every democracy, is based: the fundamental truth of representative government. Democracy prevailed over older, more archaic forms of goverment such as monarchies and oligarchies because it promised the average citizen a vote. In the most pure form of Canadian government citizens vote for a local representative who then represents their interests federally by voting on issues of national import at Parliament. Therefore, if a vote was brought to the floor against which the population of Constituency X was opposed, the representative of Constituency X would vote against it. This way the voices of the people are heard and the only things which come to pass are those upon which the majority agree.
However, this is where the Party system has caused an otherwise superior system to degenerate into one that might as well be considered a dictatorship. Instead of being elected on their own merits representatives cleave to one of the major political Parties which then fund their campaigns. In return, representatives align themselves with the Party in Parliament and vote the way the Party instructs. In this way the Party with the most representatives makes up the government. To deviate from that agreement by voting against the Party is punished severely.
Now, instead of serving the people, government serves itself and its benefactors. Constituency X might be dead set against Law Y, but if the Party is for it, and their representative is a member of the Party, then he will be forced to vote for it or suffer the consequences. Representative government then ceases to be representative. The only time the people have influence is at voting time. Thus voting time becomes the season for promise making. A point in case is Dalton McGinty, Premier of our Province of Ontario. During the election McGinty pledged not to raise taxes or implement user fees, in addition to many other electoral promises. Within eight months of being elected his government was announcing user fees for health care and a slew of new taxes.
Thus the system has become one where politicians promise the world to the citizens of this country with no intention of carrying through on their word. Local representatives typically vote the Party line and ignore the wishes of their constituents. Politics becomes a game of promise everything and deliver none of it. The citizens of this country have therefore become apathetic to the point where voter turnout for the last Federal election was a paltry 61%, the lowest it's been in over 100 years.
So if government doesn't represent the people, who does it represent? The answer is big business. Contributions to most major Parties come from donors in business with millions of dollars to burn. They help put the Party into government for obvious reasons. One look at the United States and George Bush Jr.'s tax breaks for wealthy Americans and big business should make that obvious. Vice President Dick Cheney is currently under fire for granting contracts in Iraq to companies he had interests in. In Canada the Liberal sponsorship scandal (and the millions of dollars wasted) has transformed the country from a former Liberal stronghold into closely contested race for leadership.
The Party system has generated a government "of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations" where "the people" are left to wonder why elected representatives they send to Parliament and Congress generate laws and take actions that run so contrary to their desires.
Hopefully someday soon the people will shake off their apathy and take back control of their country before democracy becomes as outdated and useless as the monarchies of old.
|
|
|
| |
posted by: therealspartacus007 (reply)
post date: 06.19.04 (8:05 am)
We're having an even worse problem with this here in America. The solution seems to be to seperate Business and State, the same way as Church and State, and to have proportional representation, but those are going to be hard to convince voters of.
|
|
