Tag: democracy

Categories
term limits

Democracy vs. Power Grabber

Like many countries with a young democracy, Panama constitutionally term-​limits its president. And like many such countries, Panama has endured a president eager to dispense with the irksome restriction.

Too often, deleting the term limit comes too easy. All it takes is a few cooperative lawmakers of the ruling party or a few cooperative judges; at most, a national referendum, if the officeholder is popular … or ruthless enough to rig it.

In Panama, though, Martinelli — who must sit out the next two terms before running for the presidency again — has been hitting a brick wall.Panama MAP

Amending Panama’s constitution is easier than amending our own. But it still requires the co-​operation of two separate legislative bodies. He could not obtain it.

A referendum was also a non-​starter. Martinelli proved less popular toward the end of his term than he was at the beginning, and Panamanian voters showed little inclination to lengthen his tenure.

He tried packing Panama’s supreme court so that it would determine the constitutional term limit to be unconstitutional. But mass protests forced a retreat there as well.

Finally, the incumbent tried the hand-​picked-​successor gambit — “re-​election in disguise” — ardently campaigning for José Domingo Arias and Arias’s vice presidential candidate, Martinelli’s wife. On May 4, though, Juan Carlos Varela won a three-​way contest for the presidency with a 39 percent plurality.

The result is not a permanent victory for term limits or democracy; such victories are never permanent. But it is a victory, and a big one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption national politics & policies

Professor of Dumbocracy

“It’s not enough for governments to simply be democratic,” Oxford professor Stein Ringen recently wrote in the Washington Post, “they must deliver or decay.”

Deliver what, you ask?

Ringen isn’t clear — surprise, surprise — but attacks “Thatcherite inequality” — though, he admits it’s worse today in Great Britain than when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister (1979 – 1990). Why no progress to his apparent ideal of economic equality? According to Ringen, “concentrations of economic power … have become unmanageable.”

He advances the same analysis of U.S. “democracy,” claiming that power has been “usurped by actors such as PACs, think tanks, media and lobbying organizations.”

Think tanks are a problem?

Ringen doesn’t explain how these additional voices serve to undercut “democracy.” Instead, he simply hurls broadsides against our “mega-​expensive politics,” warning that, “When money is allowed to transgress from markets, where it belongs, to politics, where it has no business, those who control it gain power to decide who the successful candidates will be — those they wish to fund — and what they can decide once they are in office.”

There is generally money on both or numerous sides of any given policy question. There is certainly no monolithic “they” constituting “the rich” who decide our public policy over tea at the club. Pretending there is won’t help democracy.

“It is a misunderstanding to think that candidates chase money,” writes the professor from his ivory tower. “It is money that chases candidates.”

Really? Ringen can easily test his hypothesis: run for office and wait for all that money to chase him down.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
political challengers

The Unkindest Cut

Over three thousand years ago, in ancient Egypt, two wives of the Pharaoh Ramesses III, Tiye and Iset Ta-​Hemdjert, fought over which of their sons would inherit the throne. Queen Tiye organized a harem conspiracy to favor hers. Dead, in the end, was Ramesses III, along with Tiye’s Penteweret, according to court documents.

There’s been considerable mystery surrounding Ramesses’ demise, but recent CT scans show that he almost certainly died of a slit throat. The wound had not previously been noticed because of the extensive wrappings around the pharaohnic mummy’s neck. A Horus eye amulet was found in the wound, undoubtedly placed there by the embalmers, probably for healing and protection in the afterlife.

Another mummy from that time has been determined, by genetic analysis, to be a son of Ramesses. There are strange marks around his neck. Since Penteweret had been found guilty at trial, and was said to have killed himself, and this particular mummy was dishonorably embalmed, the mummy is thought to be his. Perhaps he had hanged himself.

Such was ancient politics. Succession of rulers was often violent — and, even when not violent, there was no assurance that the claimant to the throne would be anything like a good ruler.

Which brings us to one of democracy’s great achievements, perhaps its greatest. Democratic elections do not express the popular will in any sure way. They do not conjure onto this plane of existence a Mandate of Heaven (Chinese), or any instantiation of Horus (ancient Egyptian). What they do is remove rulers from power, peacefully.

And that’s not nothing. Ask the grimace on the face of the remains of Ramesses III.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense

Democracy Sans Factions?

It’s worth remembering, as Democrats proceed with programs that have failed in the past and as Republican insiders strive to rig their own nomination process, that the political parties are private organizations. They are not governments.

They are groups of people working to gain control over government — and that control can only ever be temporary. Let us hope.

Over many years of activism in politics I’ve supported openness in elections and ballot access, working for a variety of reforms, including the securing of the rights to initiative, referendum and recall. I’ve also contemplated a few less simple ideas, like Instant Runoff Voting and proportional representation, both designed to break (or at least ease up on) the stranglehold that the two-​party system has over American democracy.

But additional reforms are worth thinking about. One, for instance, would prohibit any mention of a party name on a ballot.

Since the parties are private groups, they ought not have special access to the public ballot. All the more because the two parties are a problem in and of themselves — their perennial clamor for power perverts political discourse, unnecessarily restricting and channeling the direction of debate.

Such rules already hold sway in many county and municipal governments throughout the country. It could be instructive to study the differences in politicking and policy.

For todays’ growing ranks of independent and unaffiliated voters, perhaps the motivations in favor wouldn’t wholly be rational, but partly vengeful.

And perhaps partisans might wish to consider the reasons for that kind of anti-​partisan sentiment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture too much government

Moving to China?

Venture capitalist Eric X. Li, in an op-​ed for the New York Times, “Why China’s Political Model Is Superior,” credits the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre with producing the “stability” that “ushered in a generation of growth and prosperity.”

As for America, Li explains that our problem is an “expanded” political franchise, “resulting in a greater number of people participating in more and more decisions.”

“Elected representatives have no minds of their own and respond only to the whims of public opinion as they seek re-​election,” Li informs, and “special interests manipulate the people into voting for ever-​lower taxes and higher government spending, sometimes even supporting self-​destructive wars.”

Mr. Li points to California and predicts an American “future” of “endless referendums, paralysis and insolvency.”

But wait a second … Americans have no initiative or referendum powers at the national level. The people didn’t vote for this level of taxes, spending, war or massive debt – our elite political leaders did that. Too much control by the people? Hardly. Too little.

Note that the national government most affected by initiatives and referendums is Switzerland, which also has the world’s highest per capita income.

But, as Li tells us, “China is on a different path. Its leaders are prepared to allow greater popular participation in political decisions if and when it is conducive to economic development and favorable to the country’s national interests …” After all, “political rights … should be seen as privileges to be negotiated based on the needs and conditions of the nation.”

Those negotiations have left Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo in a Chinese prison.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Voters Ruin Everything

William Endicott, former deputy managing editor of The Sacramento Bee, thinks the problem with California legislators is their “Let the people decide” attitude. In a recent op-​ed, Mr. Endicott argued that the initiative process allows politicians to shirk their responsibilities, to let decisions be made by voters at the ballot box. 

It’s an awfully convoluted notion: to make legislators actually do their jobs, citizens must back away and give those known to shirk their responsibilities a monopoly on legislative power.

Funny, in Congress and in the 26 states where voters lack the initiative, politicians happen to be shirking their responsibilities like it’s going out of style. There’s just not as much voters can do about it.

But Endicott’s argument doesn’t really concern legislators at all. It is about the voters of California, who have (to paraphrase him) ruined everything.

He writes: “Outcomes too often have been decided not by reasoned debate but by emotional appeals, mind-​numbing and misleading television commercials and direct mail, all of which do more to confuse than to enlighten.”

So Endicott looks for legislators to “crack down on signature gatherers” and “make it more difficult to qualify a measure.”

In other words, democracy was swell, but that new-​fangled TV is too much for gullible voters. Let’s hit the kill switch on direct democracy and put all our hope in our brainy, courageous legislators. 

In other words, Californians: Shut up and pay your taxes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.