With Harper's prorogation
of
Parliament, the
Conservatives have once again thrown down the gauntlet, challenging the
impotent opposition to call an election in which he thinks he can win a
majority. The claim that Harper is doing a great job with the economy
and is defending the military and the security of Canada
is promoted time and again so as to stop any discussion on the
annexation of the Canadian economy and state institutions to the United
States of North
American Monopolies. The issue is presented as one of the
Conservatives defending the Canadian military and the security of
Canada against an opportunistic and disloyal opposition.
Again the groundwork has been laid for Canadians to line up behind one
side or the other, and the line of demarcation is supposed to be those
who stand for the "defence of our Parliament" versus those who stand
for the "defence of our troops and Canadian security."
The whole saga of prorogation and the dysfunctional
Parliament has revealed the reckless self-serving struggle of factions
for power, positions and privileges within the cartel party system, as
the parties fight it out in anticipation of the next election, an
election that will once again seek to settle which party will
preside over the anti-social nation-wrecking of the financial
oligarchy. This fight for self-serving aims, the ups and downs as deals
are brokered behind closed doors, the defence of monopoly right by
these factions at a time of great economic devastation all serve to
further undermine the legitimacy of Canada's political
institutions. It shows the great divide between the people of Canada
who want Parliament as an instrument in their hands to sort out the
problems facing the country in the spirit of nation building and the
powers-that-be whose aim is to find a way out of their impasse.
Harpers' "routine" prorogation is also an admission that
the ruling circles have no solution to the constitutional crisis and
the political disequilibrium other than to entrench the decision-making
power in the hands of the most powerful unelected elements under the
hoax that this is to save the country from "political
instability." Anybody who stands in the way is branded as a traitor and
enemy of security or someone out of touch with the economic realities
of today. It must not pass!
The use of the Royal Prerogative to prorogue Parliament
is a feature of the concentration of political power in fewer and fewer
hands. This concentration of political power in fewer hands can be seen
in the systematic firings and the non-renewal of contracts of leaders
of state agencies who do not do the bidding
of this arrogant government, the cancellation of funding to
organizations whose work in any way contradicts the Harper government,
along with criminalization, slanders and threats against workers and
people fighting for their rights and against other Members of
Parliament as well, all under the hoax of higher ideals
and superior interests that are allegedly beyond peoples' understanding
but which must be protected from what Harper calls "political
instability." Canadians are very concerned at this open display of
arrogance and are looking for a way to block it.
According to the expected functioning of the
first-past-the-post party-dominated parliamentary system, a minority
government such as Harper's is supposed to be a weak government which
must act in an accommodating manner with the other political parties in
the House in order to survive and get business done.
Canadians are educated to believe that a minority government is
possibly the most beneficial to the people of the country, since it
means that a government cannot rule without regard for the opinions of
the opposition parties as happens when a majority government declares
that it has an unchallenged "mandate to
govern." Canadians are now grappling with the problem of a minority
government that governs without opposition when it serves the electoral
fortunes of one or another party in the House to side with the
government, while the government shuts down Parliament when the
opposition appears to be united. Clearly,
the Harper Government's arrogance and high-handed disregard for the
House of Commons is the immediate problem we are facing and how to
defeat Harper is the order of the day. But how does one do that? How
does one defeat the Harper government in the absence of an official
opposition which is an alternative?
To solve this problem the developments that got us here need to be
discussed so that we can find solutions to create a new situation.
People don't only want to defeat Harper but want to transform the
crisis-ridden political and electoral system that has created and
nurtured such a government in a manner that puts the decision-making
power in their own hands.
Toronto
rally
against prorogation during visit of Prime Minister Harper to the C.D.
Howe Institute,
January 20, 2010. |
In this regard, a big problem is that the political
parties in the House of Commons have resisted each and every demand for
democratic renewal that would empower the electorate, even the most
elemental demand for proportional representation so that votes are more
fairly translated into seats. They bear full
responsibility for the political and constitutional crisis. The
marginalization of the members of the House of Commons is part and
parcel of the disempowerment of the people. To divert from the need for
reforms which renew democracy, the mantra is repeated that Canada is
"the best democracy in the world." Whether
we take into consideration the Chretien Liberal reforms introduced in
the name of "eliminating the undue influence of money" by increasing
the state subsidization of political parties, or Stephen Harper's
fraudulent "fixed-date" elections reform and fraudulent Accountability Act, the political
parties in the House of
Commons have collaborated to introduce self-serving electoral changes
that negate the need for reforms that will empower the people to fully
exercise their right to elect and to be elected and to have a say in
the direction of the society.
It is not fortuitous that the political parties in the
House of Commons rose as one and came forward as a coalition last year
over the issue of Harper's threat to withdraw the per-vote state
subsidization of political parties, which they screamed was an attack
on democracy. Harper's threat to smash a key element
of the cartel party system, in a situation where his party's
evangelical basis of funding puts it in a more financially powerful
position, violated the new rules of cartel-based "free and
fair" elections.
In my opinion, the crisis of credibility of the
political parties in Parliament and the claim that they represent
alternatives has been a key factor in the increasing disengagement of
the people from the political process. The political parties are the
key mechanisms for keeping the people out of politics. They treat
them as nothing more than a pool of voters to be manipulated through
marketing. The
more they speak of democratic reforms, the more clear it becomes that
these are a matter of introducing modern technology to establish a
one-on-one irrelevant relationship between a person and the so-called
party leadership -- really the guy or
gal in charge of marketing! The crisis of the bourgeois parties as mass
parties can be seen in the fact that they do not need members other
than for purposes of periodically staging their leadership selection
conventions. This too will be done by casting ballots in the manner
that voting is done for "American Idol." Once
again the decision-making apparatus of the political parties has been
strengthened more and more in the hands of their upper-echelons where
generous state-funding has enabled them to hire image-consultants,
marketing companies and buy and deploy sophisticated data-mining
techniques to market their "vote for
our leader" campaigns.
The whole conception and theory of the supremacy of
Parliament and the accountability of the government to the elected
members of the House of Commons is clearly out of whack with the
reality of a situation where political parties dominate the electoral
and political process and elected members are beholden
not to the electorate, but to the political parties. It will not do to
reduce this serious problem to a matter of the behaviour of Harper
alone because the Liberals were no different and the NDP are
increasingly seen as wannabe Liberals.
The people need to reject any political party that
refuses to recognize the profound constitutional, political and
electoral crisis facing the country and especially those who want to
divert the people from taking up the problem of finding a solution to
it. No amount of politicking and promises that individual politicians
will be "more responsible" is going to restore credibility and
legitimacy to the failed democratic system, let alone make it work in
the interests of the people. The people need to reject the dogmatic
rendering of how the system is supposed to work and join together to
discuss how it is working in reality and what
kind of new constitutional arrangements are required to empower
themselves.
As the MLPC statement on the prorogation of Parliament
says: "The MLPC is calling on the Canadian workers, women and youth to
step up their fight for democratic renewal so that the people's
opposition to nation wrecking gives rise to a viable effective
political opposition that will block retrogression and
embark on a nation-building project which will solve the political and
constitutional crises affecting Canada in a way that benefits the
people. This requires Committees for Democratic Renewal that forge the
working class and its allies into an effective political opposition,
the only social force capable of providing
an alternative to the corrupt cartel party system and neo-liberal rule
which has gone rogue."
