Political fragmentation

[Wayne Hall]

POLITICAL FRAGMENTATION

The problem of fragmentation is noticed when discussion moves from symptoms of institutionalized criminality to politics. Instead of looking at the criminals we look at ourselves. Instead of asking "how did they get the power to do what they are doing?" we start to ask "how can we get the power to stop them?" We are working, of course, in a situation where the great majority of politicians and officials are pressuring in the opposite direction. The same problem exists almost everywhere and if I single out Australia and New Zealand this is mainly because it is easy for me to monitor developments there. In any case these countries have appeared to function in recent years as a social laboratory for testing how much criminality can be tolerated by present-day populations. For the last twelve years the online journal Cairns News, based in the tropical city of Cairns in northern Australia, has won increasing credibility as an alternative information source. Recently under the title "Let's have a party" (in Greek this doesn't work as a pun but in English it does) Cairns News has submitted a proposal for amalgamation of three anti-systemic parties with a view to increasing the chances for achieving parliamentary representation.

A proposal of this kind for joining together of small anti-establishment parties was tried out unsuccessfully in Greece prior to the most recent national elections and for that reason (for that reason ALSO) I was pleased to gain acceptance recently on Cairns News for a brief analysis hinting at another possible way for dealing with political fragmentation. Not through perpetuating the logic of parties but through reform of the (or "a") parliamentary second chamber, eschewing universal suffrage (for it) and making it a "chamber of active citizens". Of course a court would need to be instituted with the power to decide who has the right, or better who does NOT have the right, to be deemed an "active citizen", with the result that non-active citizens would be confined to the rights enjoyed by every present-day citizen, the right to vote and the right to be a candidate in universal-suffrage elections. A reform of this kind would give citizens and voters MORE, not fewer, rights than they/we are currently permitted.

Today's monopoly of party politics and dictatorial mass media would be broken. This idea was floated (in English) during the COVID lockdown by members of the World Freedom Alliance in relation to the European Parliament (starting at minute 41.50), but it could be implemented anywhere there is representative democracy.

[Wayne Hall]

POLITICAL FRAGMENTATION (and what to do about it)

Wayne Hall

The problem of fragmentation is noticed when discussion moves from symptoms of institutionalized criminality to politics. Instead of looking at the criminals we look at ourselves. Instead of asking "how did they get the power to do what they are doing?" we start to ask "how can we get the power to stop them?" We are working, of course, in a situation where the great majority of politicians and officials are pressuring in the opposite direction. The same problem exists almost everywhere and if I single out Australia and New Zealand this is mainly because it is easy for me to monitor developments there. In any case these countries have appeared to function in recent years as a social laboratory for testing how much criminality can be tolerated by present-day populations. For the last twelve years the online journal Cairns News, based in the tropical city of Cairns in northern Australia, has won increasing credibility as an alternative information source. Recently under the title "Let's have a party" (in Greek this doesn't work as a pun but in English it does) Cairns News has submitted a proposal for amalgamation of three anti-systemic parties with a view to increasing the chances for achieving parliamentary representation.

A proposal of this kind for joining together of small anti-establishment parties was tried out unsuccessfully in Greece prior to the most recent national elections and for that reason (for that reason ALSO) I was pleased to gain acceptance recently on Cairns News for a brief comment hinting at another possible way for dealing with political fragmentation. Not through perpetuating the logic of parties but through reform of the (or "a") parliamentary second chamber, eschewing universal suffrage (for it) and making it into an "Independent Citizens Assembly". Of course a court would need to be instituted with the power to decide who has the right, or better who does NOT have the right, to be deemed an "independent citizen", with the result that non-independent citizens would be "confined" to the rights enjoyed by citizens today, i.e. the right to vote and the right to be a candidate in universal-suffrage elections. So "confined" is not the right word, isn't that so? Such a reform would give the population as a whole MORE, not fewer, rights than they/we are currently permitted. And for the first time it would appear to be within the realm of possibility for today's monopoly of party politics and dictatorial mass media to be broken. Direct democracy enthusiasts could then devote their energies to helping lawyers and a new breed of official to facilitate the workings of the court.

The first attempt at thinking about how to do all this was made during the COVID lockdown by members of the World Freedom Alliance (starting at minute 41.50. The soundtrack is in English). Our attention was focused on the European Parliament, but the idea could be floated anywhere representative democracy is established. In the EU, whose parliament is unicameral, a new second chamber would have to be custom built. Elsewhere, e.g. in Australia where the existing upper house is called the Senate, transforming it would presume recognition of the meaninglessness of "states' rights" in a federation of homogeneous former colonies where the borders between the states, prior to their very recent illicit exhumation during "the pandemic", were as inconsequential as the borders between municipalities. To cite some other Commonwealth countries: Canada's Senate has never been democratic. Canadian senators are appointed by the governor-general on the advice of the prime minister. In South Africa the post-apartheid upper house is called the National Council of Provinces but is also said to be "hindered in its role of representing the provinces" because "the dominance of the ruling ANC in the provinces makes it difficult to determine whether mandates delivered by provincial legislatures carry the interests of provinces or those of the party in power.(1)" So in none of these places is anyone going to have fewer rights if an upper house of "independent citizens" - for whose individual members not everyone can vote - should come into existence.

The proposal for the European Parliament envisaged a second chamber headquartered in Romania, whose forty-year experience of Communist rule, ultimately overthrown with popular participation, is often plausibly said to have produced a population more politically alert than the Western European norm, and also independent from Russia and probably less susceptible to complicity with Russia vs the West divide-and-rule scenarios. But the elements in the proposal of more universal applicability are those providing an alternative to the fragmentation of party politics and the vulnerability to manipulation that is a corollary of mass politics (i.e. universal suffrage).

Universal suffrage is regarded as an acquisition, a notion that is unlikely to change and cannot simply be challenged because it is nowadays seen as a necessary component of democracy. The task is one of finding a way to minimize, rather than resignedly accept, its damaging aspects, which have been acknowledged since antiquity. Democracy has been controversial since the days of the Athenian sophists and demagogues. Surely a first step for now would be to try to make available the option of choice: rule by a party or coalition of parties or rule by "independent citizens".

Economic independence is typically sought by removing "middlemen" from transactions between buyers and sellers and the situation is not dissimilar when it comes to provision and reception of information. Members of an Independent Citizens' Assembly in the envisaged scenario would communicate with their political base and with each other immediately and directly, not with the mediation of journalists or spokespersons. Resort to mediated communication would be a disqualifier, a sign that one could not be allowed to continue representing oneself as an independent citizen and that one would be required, if one wanted to continue in politics, to do so as a conventional politician, free to be in a party and to be subject to party discipline but not free to be regarded as an "independent citizen".

Activists who have tried to address the issue of the media - whose disinformation has today become literally life-threatening - typically try to devise formulas for regulation or else propose boycotts and other measures requiring mass discipline. The solution of an alternative method of government to which the media have no access has not been investigated to any extent as far as I know. The Independent Citizens' Assembly would have to be in a relation of competition with existing political institutions: competing for a mandate, perhaps in a (universal suffrage) referendum to be held every five years, say. Whichever assembly won the referendum would have actual power to legislate. The losing side would become an advisory body.

The confinement of referenda to the single issue of deciding which of the two competing parliamentary bodies would be authorized to legislate for a given period..... distinguishes this proposal from the customary recommendations of direct democracy enthusiasts and admirers of the existing Swiss mode of government, under which the role of referenda is extended to cover a whole host of policy issues. The question of "who is to decide" is simpler and in my opinion more realistic. Of course the Independent Citizens Assembly conception will be initially unfamiliar: competition between the two systems would not at first be between equals. When one of the two sides won its mandate in the five-yearly general referendum it would have to be possible, immediately after the general referendum, for the result to be challenged locally at every lower level: regional, municipal, etc. but then for this result to be respected until the time came for the next general referendum (at the end of the five years). Both assemblies would elect a leader, the leader of the side winning the general referendum would be executive head of the polity: the prime minister.

The ideas I introduce here will be competing for acceptance in our milieu with more familiar direct democratic conceptions based on wanting to involve "everyone" in political decision-making. If one can judge from the enthusiastic acceptance by quite a few people during the "COVID" lockdowns of the role of vigilante against "anti-vaxxers", the desire to police one's fellow citizens on behalf of "authority" is quite strong and possibly stronger than the desire to devise constructive inputs for democracy. Activists who would like to politicize "everyone" should be encouraged to help with implementing court decisions to exclude certain individuals and groups from recognition as "independent citizens". Those who are most comfortable being negative should be supported when their negativity has the potential to be useful.

There is of course an added complication with the European Union (in fact more than one) by comparison with simpler federations such as Australia, or even the United States. Some European Union member states are constitutional monarchies, some parliamentary republics, some presidential republics. The introduction of an Independent Citizens' Assembly could complicate the question of who is to be head of state. It would, however, be possible to propose that the identity of the state's executive leader (prime minister), irrespective of whether the existing head of state were a hereditary monarch or a president, should depend on the result of the five-yearly general referendum. If the mandate were won by the universal-suffrage parliament, the leader elected by that parliament would be prime minister. If the mandate were won by the Independent Citizens' Assembly, the leader elected by that assembly would, likewise, be prime minister. The identity of the head of state would therefore be determined by election held either under universal suffrage or through a vote by independent citizens, depending on who had won the mandate. If the mandate were won by the Independent Citizens Assembly, the hereditary monarch would be confined exclusively to ceremonial duties, with constitutional functions assigned to a head of state appointed by the prime minister.

These are just a few points of further elaboration on discussions already opened here and here.

Will this vote by the European Parliament catalyse acceptance of the need for an Independent Citizens' Assembly?

(1) Nzwana Erik Boskati: Promoting Provincial Interests: The Role of the NCOP in the National Legislature Abstract

One question that has arisen in discussion is who would have the right to vote for candidates in the Independent Citizens' Assembly. It would seem that there would have to be separation of the franchises for the two assemblies. One would have to choose, except in the referenda on allotment of powers, whether general or regional, local, etc. It may also be a good idea to place a stigma on use of the first person plural for both representatives and voters of the Independent Citizens' Assembly, to reinforce its non-party character.