Is democracy possible?

I think most people would agree that what passes for democracy in Canada and other so called developed countries isn’t. Democracy has a root meaning of “the power of the people” and comes from Greek roots – demos meaning “the people" and kratos meaning “power.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. Elections in Canada pretty well give absolute power to the party that “wins” a majority as we are seeing with the Harper Conservatives and the Clark Liberals in BC. That would be winning in the sense that the votes of 40% of the 60% who voted federally and 46% of the 50% who voted provincially result in absolute control for a party that represents fewer than half of the people - way fewer if you count those who don't vote whose disengagement relates to the inability to impact the outcome. And that control is concentrated in the hands of the leader who is crowned premier or prime minister.

Rick Mercer’s recent rant about the proposal to add more MPs addresses what then happens to the MPs elected to represent a given riding.

"But before we add new MPs, why don’t we fix some of the problems with the existing MPs. Like the fact that we are the only parliamentary democracy in the entire world where an MP does not have the right to stand up and ask a question not approved by their leader."  

The press is full of stories about cities moving to remove “Occupy” camps throughout Canada. Initially the camps were tolerated because they were peaceful and because many municipal governments sympathized or agreed with the need to question the political, education, social and environmental systems that are excluding so many. But it seems we have a time-limited ability to tolerate a movement for more than a week or two if it includes tents in public spaces.

Removing occupiers will not remove either the demand for democracy or the need for new ways of achieving change. Friends who have participated in the “peoples’ assemblies” in both Victoria and Vancouver have been impressed with the demonstration of the consensus building exercised through the efforts to create an inclusive democracy. Greens believe in Grassroots Democracy. The Occupy movement is a living experiment in power of the people.

And while our media coverage of the movement for democratic reform as expressed by OWS has shifted from ignoring to briefly acknowledging the movement has a point to demanding an end to encampments in the past six weeks, it does not cover the fact that protesting an unfair, inequitable and earth and community destroying economic system has been the norm in Israel this year and has been a long standing trend in Europe and around the global south.

It is no wonder the power holders in the EU forbade Greece from holding a referendum on the so-called “bail out.” Like most political power holders there is no desire to ask the people for their consent. In all likelihood it would be withheld, as it was when they were asked to approve the EU constitution.

A Metro Victoria Community Economy Group Initiative has developed a consensus statement on economic development for Victoria. It is a good example of what a consensus process can produce and way better than the business as usual growth and consumption based economic plans being developed for most of our communities. This is an example of a different kind of democracy. 

In Oregon, the Governor has implemented the “Citizens' Initiative Review (CIR) … an exercise in deliberative democracy. It puts 24 randomly selected voters into a fair public hearing to listen to campaigners, learn the issues, and separate fact from fiction on ballot measures.”

It sounds like an attempt to institutionalize something like BC’s experiment in the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform that was so successful that it has not been used since. 

Greens think there should be meaningful opportunities for people to get engaged and for that engagement to translate into public policy. We figure we could finds ways to do that and that is what we are committed to once elected. Greens who are elected stand for change and real democracy.