PhilPaine.com

I always get sus­pi­cious when I hear a sin­gle phrase repeat­ed exces­sive­ly in the media. Late­ly, the sus­pect phrase is “nobody wants an election”.

Our creepy Con­ser­v­a­tive Prime Min­is­ter, Stephen Harp­er, has been inton­ing this phrase since the pos­si­bil­i­ty of over­turn­ing his gov­ern­ment appeared on the hori­zon. But the oppo­si­tion Lib­er­als also used it to avoid a con­fronta­tion they did not feel ready to win. In fact, the Lib­er­als wast­ed their big oppor­tu­ni­ty, with typ­i­cal cow­ardice, and Harp­er prob­a­bly thinks he can win if the cards are flopped now. But the asser­tions of politi­cians don’t con­cern me. They are not reliable.

What con­cerns me is the cho­rus of agree­ment that echoed through the media. It is now accept­ed as uni­ver­sal wis­dom that an elec­tion is a ter­ri­ble ordeal that the Cana­di­an pub­lic should resent endur­ing. This bizarre notion is almost invari­ably accom­pa­nied by the asser­tion that elec­tions are “expen­sive”.

Now, of course, every politi­cian in pow­er would nat­u­ral­ly pre­fer to not be account­able to the peo­ple. Stephen Harp­er, in par­tic­u­lar, would love to be declared Prime Min­is­ter For Life. In his heart of hearts, he envies and admires the geron­to­crat­ic gang­sters of the Com­mu­nist Par­ty in Chi­na. Noth­ing else is to be expect­ed from the kind of crea­tures who worm their way into our Par­lia­ment. But it is extreme­ly fright­en­ing to me, if it comes to be believed by the Cana­di­an peo­ple that elec­tions are an ago­niz­ing, trau­mat­ic ordeal that should be avoid­ed at all costs. It’s pro­found­ly irre­spon­si­ble of the media to pro­pa­gan­dize this view.

Exact­ly what is the rea­son­ing behind this claim that nobody wants (with the unspo­ken impli­ca­tion that nobody should want) to hold an elec­tion? What exact­ly is the unpleas­ant thing that peo­ple are sup­posed to fear? The oppor­tu­ni­ty to hold their politi­cians account­able? Nobody is oblig­ed to go to the polls, if they don’t want to. The hold­ing of an elec­tion does not impinge on any­one’s pri­vate life in any annoy­ing way, places no unwant­ed oblig­a­tion, nor does it require any greater effort than tak­ing a paid hour off of work to mark a few x’s on a piece of paper. Why is every jour­nal­ist con­vinced that we dread this? Is it because they believe that we, the peo­ple, are so stu­pid that we can’t bear to be forced to think about pub­lic poli­cies and make deci­sions? Poor, poor, stu­pid us…We should be pro­tect­ed from hav­ing to make deci­sions, because we’re so dumb, it would hurt our poor lit­tle heads to have to mark a bal­lot.… Deci­sions are best left to those nat­ur­al genius­es, pro­fes­sion­al politi­cians and the media.

The media harp on the lamest of sup­port­ing argu­ments for this the­o­ry: the idea that elec­tions are “expen­sive”. In the last few months, I’ve noticed that almost every time that “nobody wants an elec­tion” is trot­ted out, it is accom­pa­nied by some allu­sion to the expense of hold­ing elections.

I cal­cu­late that every Cana­di­an is called upon to spend three dol­lars per annum to defray the cost of hold­ing fed­er­al elec­tions. Three dol­lars a year! This does not strike me as being an out­ra­geous price to pay to live in free­dom, when one con­sid­ers that some of us have risked, and some­times sac­ri­ficed, their lives to secure it. The cost of a sin­gle fed­er­al elec­tion is insignif­i­cant com­pared to any of the Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­men­t’s pork-bar­rel give-aways, not to men­tion the bil­lions of dol­lars of bud­get sur­plus that they pissed away just before a reces­sion. Yet jour­nal­ists insist that we must bit­ter­ly resent spend­ing three dol­lars apiece for democ­ra­cy. I, on the oth­er hand, rash­ly pro­pose that we spend a lit­tle more.

There’s no rea­son why we should­n’t have fed­er­al elec­tions every year. Our par­lia­men­tary sys­tem could eas­i­ly accom­mo­date the change. The abil­i­ty to over­turn a gov­ern­ment by a vote of no con­fi­dence would remain the same. The lim­it of five years for an unchal­lenged admin­is­tra­tion would sim­ply be reduced to one year, and elec­tions would become a rou­tine event, with the nor­mal ones held on a reg­u­lar and con­ve­nient date. Polling sta­tions would become more famil­iar and per­ma­nent, but the pro­ce­dure would remain the same.

What would change would be that elec­tions would cease to be an idi­ot­ic cir­cus of infan­tile name-call­ing and but­ton-push­ing. The “cri­sis” atmos­phere gen­er­at­ed by the media would not be as con­vinc­ing. We would have to focus more on what mat­ters: what should pub­lic pol­i­cy be and are those in pow­er doing their jobs prop­er­ly? Fre­quent elec­tions would pose no threat to those mem­bers of par­lia­ment who are hon­est and com­pe­tent. It is the brain­less par­ty hacks, the cor­rupt, and the incom­pe­tent nin­nies who would fear los­ing their seats. A par­ty in major­i­ty pow­er, no longer ensured a carte blanche to do what­ev­er it wants for years, would have to face the pos­si­bil­i­ty of see­ing its major­i­ty evap­o­rate over short peri­ods of time. Minor­i­ty gov­ern­ments would have to prove their cred­i­bil­i­ty day to day. Oppo­si­tion par­ties, with a shake-up from the peo­ple always in the imme­di­ate future, would not have to engage in arcane cal­cu­la­tions of exact­ly when it is most advan­ta­geous to chal­lenge the gov­ern­ment. The built-in advan­tage of incum­bents would be weak­ened. No par­ty could afford to stuff par­lia­ment with brain­less toad­ies and yes-men. The arro­gant, anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic “lead­er­ship” cult of some­one like Stephen Harp­er would be much more dif­fi­cult to main­tain. Pow­er would tend to shift back to the floor of Par­lia­ment, revers­ing its sin­is­ter, dan­ger­ous and pro­found­ly un-Cana­di­an shift to the Prime Min­is­ter’s office.

A par­lia­men­tary gov­ern­ment should be an exec­u­tive board that we, the share­hold­ers of the nation, employ to car­ry out pub­lic pol­i­cy — pol­i­cy that we deter­mine, not them. They should be sub­ject to annu­al review, and we should have the pow­er to fire them when­ev­er we want. That’s what democ­ra­cy is for. We should not set­tle on a half-baked, half-assed, half-democ­ra­cy when we can have the real thing.

At the moment, under the cur­rent sys­tem, we will prob­a­bly end up stuck with the Con­ser­v­a­tives for anoth­er three or four years. Harp­er is adept at manip­u­lat­ing the fear of elec­tions in the oppo­si­tion, and the con­tempt for them among the media. He called a snap elec­tion when he need­ed one. When the reces­sion (a prod­uct of crack­pot eco­nom­ic the­o­ries that Harp­er pro­fess­es) start­ed to hit us hard, the oppo­si­tion had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn him out, but they dithered and pan­icked. Now that oppor­tu­ni­ty is prob­a­bly passed. This is a tragedy for Cana­da, because Harper’s gov­ern­ment is pro­found­ly anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic, con­temp­tu­ous of the peo­ple, fis­cal­ly incom­pe­tent, and moral­ly cor­rupt. If peo­ple grasped that hold­ing fre­quent elec­tions is their best defense against bad politi­cians and bad par­ties, we would­n’t be in this mess.