Suppressing Dissent #nlpoli

One of the hallmarks of the Conservative political method since 2003 has been the suppression of public dissent.

Anyone who wants to raise a problem for public discussion is attacked for being “negative.”  It is part of the aggressive campaign the Tories have waged to eliminate political opposition and stifle anything that was not approved by the Premier’s Office.

No surprise, then, that Bonavista mayor Betty Fitzgerald went to her local MHA to get a letter she could sign attacking one of her councillors who had violated the iron Conservative law against dissent.

The Stacked House Filibuster #nlpoli

Democracy is a beautiful thing. 

The people of Newfoundland and Labrador are witnessing its full beauty in the filibuster against the Conservative government’s latest assault on openness, transparency and accountability. 

The question of democracy in Newfoundland and Labrador #cdnpoli #nlpoli

“A democracy only works really well,” according to Kathy Dunderdale, “when people are asking questions.”

Opposition Leader Dwight Ball told a Western Star interviewer that “my job is to ask questions with substance…”.

Not to be outdone in the spate of year-end interviews, New Democratic Party leader Lorraine Michael tied the health of democracy to asking questions:

If our natural resources standing committee ... were operating like a House of Commons committee or like the committees in Nova Scotia, we’d have a fully open discussion on Muskrat Falls.

Not surprisingly, all three party leaders in Newfoundland and Labrador agree on what constitutes democracy in the province.  They lead parties that agree on everything but the fine details. 

Not surprisingly, the three leaders discuss democracy solely in terms of what happens in the provincial legislature.  The only disagreement they have, such as it is, centres on the questions the opposition parties ask.  The NDP want more time to ask questions.  The Liberals want to ask better questions and the Conservatives claim variously that there is enough time for questions as things stand or that the quality of them is low anyway so more time wouldn’t make things better.

In one sense, democracy is about questions.

It is about people who want power – like Kathy Dunderdale, Lorraine Michael and Dwight Ball – asking the rest of us in the community to support them at election time.  We support them with the one thing that we all have in common:  our individual vote. Everyone in the community has exactly the same kind of vote. And it is our individual vote that is the foundation of everything else that happens in our democracy.

In between elections, democracy is about those people who get enough support to form a government asking “May I” when they want to do something. That’s essentially what they do in the House of Assembly.

They pose the question to the other members of the House, whether from their own party or the other parties and individuals who won enough votes to sit in the legislature. 

You’ll find that quite literally in the procedure.  The Speaker will “put the question” on a motion, a resolution or a bill to the House and ask the members to vote.

Ask a question. 

Vote on an answer.

Decision made.

All starting from the fundamental question put to individual voters at an election to chose individuals who will represent those voters in the legislature.

Things weren’t always that way.  But starting almost 800 years ago, in those countries that follow the British parliamentary tradition, people started to place limits on what the government could do without the agreement of the people ruled by the government.

The 1689 Bill of Rights brought together many of the features of our modern democracy that we often assume have always been around and that people have always accepted.  Freedom of speech,  freedom to stand for and to vote in elections to the legislature and the need for the legislature to meet regularly are all contained in the 1689 Bill of Rights. They survive today: some changed, some the same.

At the core of the whole thing is choice.  People chose their representatives to sit in the legislature.  We select those representatives to stand in for each of us every day between elections.

We do not elect a government.  We elect people to the legislature, to the House of Assembly.  Out of those people, we get a group to run the government.  And those people running the government must come back to our direct representatives for approval for what they want to do, especially when it comes to spending public money.

There are two other ideas that go along with choice and who gets to chose.  One of these is that choices must be based on information.  The legislature’s day-to-day business is built around debate and the exchange of information. 

The other idea is that the information and choice must be in public.  The legislature has space for people to sit and watch what happens.  News media and others can report on what happens.  The legislature keeps an official record – Hansard – that people can read.

Seen from that perspective, those political comments about questions and the legislature don’t look all that good or convincing.  Looking at some recent history, one can find a host of examples  – from the spending scandal to the Abitibi expropriation fiasco  - that show the bad things that happen when politicians operate in secret. 

You can also see that the Premier’s excuses for keeping the legislature closed simply don’t make sense.  If she feels that her current job is a “rare privilege”, then Kathy Dunderdale needn’t remind herself of that fact every day, in secret, in her office. 

She can show up in the legislature and demonstrate that she gets the point:  if you want power in this province, the you have to stand up in the legislature and ask “May I?”

The purpose of the House is to subject those with power to public examination and to the test of debate, discussion and disclosure.  The Premier and her colleagues should want the legislature to be open as much as possible.  They should want to tell us about their plans, present their case and convince us all that they have good ideas.

How very odd it is, then, that the Premier admitted at the end of last year that she and her colleagues don’t have any thing ready to present to the House.  This is the case despite the fact they’ve been in office since 2003 and the Premier herself has held her job for more than a year.

At other times, Dunderdale has said that she kept the legislature closed because the House was dysfunctional.  The opposition parties were weak. Who will hold them accountable for what they say, she wondered. 

The answer is simple:  the ordinary people of Newfoundland and Labrador will.  If the opposition political parties are as weak as Dunderdale claims, then they won’t be able to hide away from public scrutiny either.  Exposing yourself to examination works both for those with power and those who want it.

The fact that the Premier and her colleagues avoid the House as they do and denigrate the legislature as the Premier does, she demonstrates nothing less than contempt for the people of the province.

To be fair, though, none of the parties in the House can really escape blame on this point.  All parties have  helped to create the current climate. Dunderdale controls how often the House sits.  But the other parties went along unquestioningly with the special ballot laws that undermine the right of individuals to stand for election.  Some even openly suggested making this a one party state.  Perhaps that explains why they slipped things through the House with a nod and a wink and stood idly by as their colleagues abused the fundamental rights we have enjoyed. Now they may not see it that way. They may believe that what they have done is absolutely right in every respect.

But they were not right.

It is not okay.

The attitude and actions of politicians in the province in recent decades are why the state of democracy in our province is, itself, in question.

- srbp -

Leadership by fiat

The Telegram editorial last Friday took issue with the upcoming coronation of Kathy Dunderdale as leader of the provincial Conservatives and, by default, the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Check it out. 

You won’t be disappointed, right down to what appears to be the date code buried the editorial’s URL – 1969-12-31.

December 31, 1969.

There is, however, one small issue that deserves some comment:

There is an unwritten code of leadership campaigns in governing parties: a departing premier will seek a capable senior caretaker who is not interested in the leadership, so that no advantage will be conferred on the person holding the office in the upcoming leadership race.

Since 1949, there’s only been one case in which an incumbent Premier resigned and left behind a caretaker leader in his place.

Brian Tobin high-tailed it back to federal politics in October 2000.  he left with such speed that the Liberals had no choice but get someone in the job while they organized a party leadership fight.

In 1978-79, Frank Moores stayed in the job until his party found a successor.  As it turned out, that was Brian Peckford.  In 1988-89, Peckford did the same thing.  The Conservatives turned up Tom Rideout.

On December 28, 1995 – 15 years ago last month – Clyde Wells announced he’d be leaving politics.  He’d stay on only as long as it took the party to sort out the leadership.  By the end of January, Wells handed over the reins to Brian Tobin.

And that’s it.

Look across the country and you’ll see the same pattern.  Go back into the pre-Confederation history of this place and you’ll find Premier handing off to replacement, not to some sort of stand-in.

There’s another part to this, as well.  The outgoing leader left it to his or her party to figure out who would replace him. And in each instance, the party leadership did their job.  

In some respects it shouldn’t surprise anyone that a guy who wanted to abolish free speech in the province’s legislature took it upon himself to anoint his replacement. 

Through all of this, there is a thread that runs very deep.  It is the thread the Telegram’s editors found:  it’s the thread of democracy, of the fundamental belief that ordinary people pick who gets to lead. Ordinary members of political parties should get to pick the leader from choices at a contest.

And then later on, in a general election, ordinary voters who may not belong to that political party get to make a choice about who runs the whole place.

There’s more to this than just a nod to some mouldering and out-dated idea:  a party leadership contest helps to sort out the poseurs from the people with the gravitas to do the job of representing the entire province and all its people as the head of government.

Kathy Dunderdale’s coronation continues a tradition alright, the sad tradition begun in 2003 that undermines the province’s democratic institutions.

- srbp -

The horrors of democracy

From a recent Telegram editorial:

Those same Republicans are now saying these heroes, many of whom suffer from chronic respiratory diseases, must stand aside until the country’s fattest fat cats get to keep their three per cent tax holiday. 

One could hardly imagine any greater depth of moral bankruptcy.

And from the news:

The US Senate on Wednesday approved a long-awaited multi-billion-dollar health package for emergency responders to the terrorist attacks of Sep 11, 2001.
…
The legislation was to be passed later Wednesday by the House of Representatives and sent to President Barack Obama's desk for signature. The approval by both chambers of Congress would come on the last day before lawmakers head home for a holiday recess.

Moral bankruptcy indeed.

Democracy is a messy business but as this bill demonstrates, in a healthy democracy parties can reconcile their contending points of view in a compromise that works for all.  In the end, the health care bill passed the Senate unanimously.

The Congress also passed a bill repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that discriminates against homosexuals serving in the American military. And those are just some of the measures passed as the members head off to a Christmas break.  The legislators will be back in January, incidentally, hard at work passing laws and keeping the current administration accountable to the people whose money the government spends.

All that noise  that hurt the ears of the Telegram editorial board is, in fact, an essential feature of any democracy worthy of the name.  It is, to be sure, a very necessary and very natural expression of a thriving society where people can argue about ideas,  have strong disagreements and then find a middle ground that allows everyone to move forward.

Compare to the current goings on in Newfoundland and Labrador.  The legislature sits for a handful of days a year.  When it does sit, as in the eight day wonder just completed, the members spoke about a handful of pathetic bills that did little more than change the punctuation is some straight-forward bills.  They spoke about those bills – debate is hardly the word for it -  with some of the most incoherent speeches delivered in this or any other legislature on the planet.

At the same time, the governing Conservatives are busily working to avoid having any sort of open political competition within their own party for the Premier’s job recently vacated in an unseemly haste by Danny Williams.   These denizens of the proverbial smoke-filled rooms and politicians like Jerome Kennedy and Darin King are afraid. 

They are afraid not only of debate, perhaps, but of their own inability, ultimately, to bring people together.

They seem to be genuinely distrustful of politics itself.  After all, debate and reconciliation, are core features of politics in a democratic society.

Seriously.

The problem in 2001 that Tories are pointing to was not that the Liberal leadership produced differences of opinion.  Those differences exist as a matter of course in every group of human beings. The political problem for Liberals came from the fact that Roger Grimes hard trouble bringing people together on his own team in a common cause.

The Conservative effort to deliver a leader without an open competition will do nothing except point out that the Conservatives not only lack a suitable replacement for Danny Williams, they are desperate not to risk their hold on power.  What’s more, Jerome or Darin or Kathy know that they lack the leadership skills to reconcile the factions within their own party.  Otherwise they wouldn’t stand for a back-room fix.

And in the process, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians should be highly suspicious of whomever the back-rooms boys settle on to run the Conservative Party.  After all, how can the people of Newfoundland and Labrador trust them to bring people together in much larger causes than who gets to head the Tory tribe?

Politics is supposed to be adversarial and the more open the differences the easier it is for people to consider the various aspects of difficult ideas.  Consider what might have happened, for example, had the legislature done what it is supposed to do and forced the cabinet to explain and fully justify something like the Abitibi expropriation.

The job of holding government accountable is not just for the opposition. Government members have a role to play as members of the House.

Newspapers and other media also have a role to play in a healthy democracy.  Usually, the role is to question and to criticise those in power.  Yet instead of showing any enthusiasm for democracy, the Telegram editorial board is slipping into the same anti-democratic way of thinking it offered in March and April 1931.  At that time, the country supposedly needed a break from democracy and the Telegram was all in favour of it.

Simply put:  just as one could not be a democrat and support the imposition of an unelected government in 1931, one cannot support democracy and hold out the recent session of the legislature as anything other than the embarrassment that it is.
 
If, as the Telegram editorial board contends,  the most recent session of the United States Congress is a sign of moral bankruptcy and if  the House of Assembly is a repository of nobility and virtue by comparison, then let us all hope the province is very soon beset by every form of political debauchery the human mind can imagine.

There is, after all, something much more horrible than democracy.

- srbp -

Leading the nation…

in a lamentable trend.

Via nottawa, here’s a link to Jim Travers’ excellent column on the decline of democratic institutions in Canada.

Regular readers of these humble e-scribbles will know that the local legislature and the government which has taken complete control of it in every respect is way ahead of the crowd in eroding the function of democratic institutions.

Everything Jim says about Ottawa applies equally in St. John’s.

The phenomenon is not a partisan one.  The current Conservative crowds in Ottawa and St. John’s have merely taken to the whole trend started under respectively – Chretien and Tobin - with an unnatural lust.

The root of the problem is easy to identify.

The cure, as Jim lays it out, is the same thing:

If war is too serious to leave to generals, then surely democracy is too important to delegate to politicians.

We – the voters – let the politicians carry on the way they do.

We - the voters – can change things.

You just gotta wanna.

-srbp-

In your wildest dreams…

You likely never imagined a popular revolt at the idea that parliament would not be sitting for about the same number of days that Tom Rideout was Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador.

[Okay, well, it would actually be longer than that but just go with it for now.]

But revolting the people are.

Well, at least a chunk of them.

Susan Delacourt surveyed some of the online efforts, including this tee being flogged by the crowd at rabble.ca. 

Click and you’ll get the rabble.ca Cafepress store.  Go ahead.  Click it. Your humble e-scribbler doesn’t get a cut.

Meanwhile in Newfoundland and Labrador, does anyone care that the provincial legislature only sits  - in total  - for the same number of  days Tom was Premier?

-srbp-

To the good people of Straits-White Bay North: you can vote today to replace Trevor

Forget protest in the streets.

Protest where it hurts:  the ballot box.

Danny Williams campaigned in your district in 2001 and held out the Tory victory there and across the road for Wally Young as proof times were changing in the Tory favour.

Well, times have really changed.  

If you want to send a message to the government it will never, ever forget, then there is a simple way to send a message.

Vote today.

It’s called a special ballot.

Every person can request a special ballot including:

• an elector who has reason to believe that he/she will have difficulty voting on polling day perhaps due to work or personal commitments;

• a student who is in attendance at a recognized educational institution either inside or outside the Province;

• an elector temporarily residing outside the Province for a continuous period of less than 6 months who is unable to attend at either the advance or regular poll;

• an elector who is incarcerated in a correctional institution or in detention at the Waterford Hospital;

• a patient in hospital who will be unable to attend either the advance or regular poll.

All you have to do is contact the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer, otherwise known as Elections Newfoundland and Labrador.

There’s a form to complete and send in.  You can find it in pdf format here.

They’ll send you back a voter kit which you can use to cast your vote right now.

But there’s no election yet, you may be thinking.

Doesn’t matter.

Under section 86(4) of the Elections Act, voters who meet those criteria above can ask for a special ballot no more than four weeks before an election or by-election is called.  Well, you and the rest of the world don’t know when the thing will be called but we know when the earliest date is that it could be called.

That would be October 2, the day Trevor said he is quitting the House of Assembly.  Any of you who knew Trevor was going could have already voted.  But since the rest of us found out today, you should be able to get a ballot and vote right now.

There is no legal reason for Paul Reynolds to refuse you the opportunity to vote under section 86(4).

And don’t worry about the fact there are no declared candidates.

Under section 86.4, you can write in the name of the political party you want to vote for instead of the name of a particular person.  Once a candidate is declared for that party, the candidate will get your vote. 

Voting is your right.

-srbp-