Brian Holmes on 15 Apr 2001 22:31:18 -0000 |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
[Nettime-bold] counterpowers - executive democracy |
It's a pleasure to read the Montreal newspapers during the run-up to the Summit of the Americas. A far cry from what you'd get in the States, or France for that matter. Take a normally conservative paper like The Gazette, with the usual-type headline: "Police Worry About Black Blocks." On page 1 there isn't a single report of fire-bombing or conspiracy, so you flip to page 7 and it shows a picture of a jackbooted cop dressed entirely in black, jabbing a machine gun into the face of a protestor while kicking him in the groin! Mixed message? If your eye drifts to the bottom left of page 6, another article tells you some church group is gonna protest right here in Montreal on the night of the 20th, in solidarity with, apparently, the anarchists up there in Quebec City wreeaking hell and havoc with those 34 innocent world leaders and their corporate cheering squads... But the subject is executive democracy, so here's a tidbit from a French-language paper, Le Devoir, April 11. Turns out that even politicians are losing faith in the government! The article is by an elected representative, a Parti Quebecois member, president of the Quebec National Assembly, and founder of the Parlementary Conference of the Americas. OK, it's also a biased view from a separatist party and there's plenty of Canadian politics between the lines, but check it out if you still don't get the reasons for what's about to happen in Quebec City: DEMOCRACY IS MORE THAN JUST ELECTIONS Parliaments marginalized in the American countries Jean-Pierre Charbonneau The first thing to be said is that the behavior of the governments participating in the Summit of the Americas has weakened and continues to weaken representative democracy rather than reinforcing it, even though that was the primary objective sought by the new "partnership of the community of American democracies." When you analyze the official texts and declarations of the heads of State, you immediately realize that their conception of strenthening representative democracy is limited to improving the electoral process, to put a halt to the coups d'etat and the military dictatorships that poisoned the lives of the Latin American peoples for decades. But nothing supports the idea that they are really interested in representative democracy once the elections are over. If that were the case, the responsibility of the popularly elected deputies and senators who have received a mandate to co-govern their societies with the leaders of the executive branches would be recognized everywhere and at all levels of state power. In a truly healthy representative democracy, elected officials participate in framing the important social projects, with substantial oppportunites to oversee the way they are carried out. By acting like elected monarchs at the head of political-technocratic oligarchies, the continent's 34 heads of state not only contradict their initally generous commitments, but they accelerate the trend toward a marginalization of the parliaments by the executive branch (the governments). What prevails more or less everywhere is not democratic practice, but authoritarian and absolutist behavior. Nothing to inspire populations to adopt democratic ideals. On the contrary, when citizens see their heads of state discounting their voices and ignoring the peoples' elected representatives, they become ever more suspiscious of the political class, while becoming skeptical, if not cynical, about the real usefulness of parliamentary assemblies and their members, the deputies and senators... To this day, none of the continent's some 300 parliamentary bodies has been able to shoulder its fundamental responsibility to survey the executive branch and contribute to good public policy with respect to the FTAA. So it's clear that a vicious circle has been set into place, resulting not only in the weakening but even the devaluation of democracy itself. The subliminal message that goes out is that an enlightened dictatorship or an elective monarchy, without any parliament or any long, fastidious and sometimes excessive discussions, is preferable for the common good - partiularly when what's at stake is a major project that involves the future of the multitude. [snip] So what if we all just said enough is enough? Brian Holmes _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold