Political Parties are Squatters in our Parliament

Miscellany

Posted November 22, 2019

Political Parties are Squatters in our Parliament

Parliamentary Democracy replaced Direct Democracy in the post Dark Ages era. This was necessitated primarily by the logistics of the “country states” as distinct form the “city states” of ancient Greece; and other factors.

But Democracy in any form is anathema to those born with or have acquired the “bullying” trait - let’s call them “Czarismatics” for colour and convenience. They occur in all societies, not unlike people predisposed to music, horse racing, theft, flying, lying, etc. Czarismatics want to control the society and saw the rebirth of democracy as an impediment to bullying. Their reaction was to form a gang in parliament so as to prevail over the un-organized members (“MPs”), sort of “leave them divided and be ruled” by the gangsterized ones. This left no choice to other MPs but to coagulate in gangs themselves. Thus the Parliament metamorphosed into a battlefield of unending gang wars. Behold Partyocracy.

Gangs sought self preservation and growth by recruiting mercenaries in advance of elections. The more recruits a gang would get “elected”, the greater its hold on parliament. Once one gang has more than half the number of MPs, Parliament becomes rather immaterial as Democracy becomes skin-thin and serves as the proverbial sheep-skin for Czarism.

The thus fragmented parliament is sold to the populace as a stable pair, made by the “party in power” counterweighted by the “opposition”, made up by the power-neutered parties. The Czarismatics who control the parties quickly recognized that attiring the system in the cloak of Democracy not only protects them against the ire of the populace but lets them get away with doings an overt dictator would not risk. This resulted in the moniker “Elected Tyranny” and prompted Mark Twain to remark that "No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session”.

Last year Judge Ward Branch decided political parties have no legal status, therefore they can misbehave with impunity, including misappropriating public money. And that, shelters the parties from society recovering the “loot”. This amounts to courts licencing the Parties to operate at a substantially lower ethical level than that of spectator sports.

Ostensibly, each and every MP is elected as a lawmaker. There is no ballot for electing a parliamentary opposition as there would be if the system was left to operate fairly. No, I do not advocate electing separately an “Opposition” to Parliament, neither do I exclude something replacing the senile Senate, but that is for a future paper. What we need urgently is to end the subversion of democracy by special interest groups, fighting for whatever Partyocracy may be exploited to produce.

The stability of pairs is indisputable. A free and true parliament resembles a wheel, each point of which is counterweighted by another, known as its “diametrically opposite”, all pairs spinning on a common axis oriented to the betterment of the society, it, the axis, being Democracy. In contrast, Partyocracy is a “square wheel” immobilizing the society for the perpetuation of the status quo complete with the parasites rooted and feeding on it, loosely referred to as the “establishment”.

Bringing change to a world conditioned to fear change attracts friends and foes, this being in the nature of things. In a free parliament each proposiastion would draw proponents and opponents, scrutinizing it from every angle, blowing away the chaff and keeping the wheat. But the “adversity” is localized on only that issue and after its disolution it fades away.

In a true and free parliament, the MPs build their own stature and do it in the open on the public stage. They cannot any longer get away with telling their constituents “the Party Whip made me do it”, or I misbehaved lest I disturb “party solidarity”, or other such nonsense. In the end, it is the majority of the MPs who will decide issues on merit instead of voting parroting the parties’ bosses utterances.

The ticket to the House for an aspiring candidate is now a proclamation of subservience to a party. This is in effect a major disqualification for election. MPs need be loyal to their constituents and only to them. They must serve those whom they represent and must refrain from doing that which parties recruit MPs to do.

Progress is made by undisciplined minds venturing beyond the conventional, to “do the impossible and pursue the unthinkable” – it is to those we owe what we have. Building a nation cannot happen with MPs living under the fear of the “Party’s Whip”. By definition.

A most important feature of a democratic parliament, is that the peoples representatives make the Law, and it is they who appoint the government to administer the Law. The MPs appoint the Prime Minister and, perhaps the Ministers, as well. This last aspect is worth consideration because nobody has proven that having the PM select subservient ministers is meritorious. A parliament which appoints a government, can “dis-appoint” it, in whole or in part, to spare society things like the fiasco of the BC fleet of aluminum Catamaran ferries, the Avro Arrow aircraft debacle and the other stupid things governments do; or cleverly “neglect” doing.

This is a highly abbreviated rendition of the matter. There are arrays of possibilities for each facet of democracy that are suppressed by partyocracy and will only come forward when the squatters are evicted form the House. What matters now is the recognition that partyocracy is by design a system for the subversion of Democracy. And establish that nobody may degrade an MP to the second-rate status of a hobbled “Opposition” Member.

These will go a long way toward eradicating the “flaws” of Democracy, these which Churchill recognized. These would free democracy to do for us the precious things it can.

As Plato determined, “trouble” will remain endemic until the “kings become philosophers and the philosophers become kings”. In this he paints in bright colours the fact that human society must be governed by Reason to the exclusion of Despotism. It is very important. Indeed.

Political Parties are Squatters in our Parliament - Alcyonenews