The Banana Republic Files. In today’s Times we find the report that “At the start of yesterday evening’s sitting of Parliament, the Speaker gave a written answer to a question by Nationalist MP Franco Debono on progress in talks on the financing of political parties, which he considered urgent.”
Well, thanks to Labour’s recent walk out and tantrum this is the current situation: “The House Select Committee on the Strengthening of Democracy had advanced its discussions on the topic. A period of public consultation on the electoral process and system had expired on December 18, 2009. The Speaker expressed the hope that the current situation, wherein the select committee was not meeting, would be temporary and the committee would soon be able to continue its work.”
Notwithstanding all the Speaker’s high hopes the bottom line is: democracy is on hold.
Earlier this week the Green Party filed a judicial protest over the electoral law. The legal challenge to article 52 of the Constitution was filed in Court as another direct result of the Labour abandoning of the process for “Strengthening of Democracy”.
No way forward for rules on party funding. No way forward on electoral reform. The future is dull. The future is a Banana Republic.
3 replies on “Democracy on Hold”
I have struggled to form a first opinion on possible solutions to our state-of-the-art mediocrity fed by an evident plpn culture.
The third party solution sounds too much of a window of opportunity for minimum popular support to maximize power. Old hat really. Would probably change little.
Now armed with Westminster’s post budget goings on and some rumination on broad democracy concepts, I have an interim opinion :)
Democracy is not on hold because some committee is not meeting around some table. What makes our democracy a hobbling charade is the inability of the 4th estate to counter the amplification of partial, doctored, sanitized, machiavellized, self-serving information disseminated by the powers that be. Well, it can not get more old hat than that I suppose, but there you are. You can not have deocracy without reliable info as much as you can not have stuffat without a stove…
Yes Danny if we are to start writing the Writ of Indictment then I would call the following as primary suspects:
1) We, the people
2) Them, the Fourth Estate
3) Them, the ennablers and enjoyers of the statue quo (PLPN)
agreed other than we the people…our collective abilities to carry ourselves forward struggles to make it beyond our front garden. 2 and 3 deffo. That is why we need parties (the more the merrier) within a culture that demands full access to info…the leads to informed opinions, informed decisions…