By Con George-Kotzabasis July 21,
2016
Breathing democratic
freedom is neither easy nor free; it entails both rights and obligations and
most importantly knowledge of current fundamental issues. But in most
democracies their constituents tend to uphold and demand more their rights than
their obligations, and more deplorably, a sizable number of them exercise their
rights in a state of ignorance. This imbalance, however, between rights and
obligations, as well as lack of knowledge of the real issues, puts in jeopardy
the functioning of a politically just and economically productive democracy, and
indeed endangers its existence as a form of government.
Moreover, it makes its
voters who are uninformed of the points at issue captive to populist slogans
and to that everlasting traducer of democracy, identified by Aristotle, demagogy,
that appeals to the hopes and fears of the electors and by
propagandistic lies and false promises opens the doors of power to demagogues.
This is exemplified by two recent political events in our times: Alexis Tsipras
and his party of Syriza winning the elections in Greece on a wave of populism
and unprecedented lies and false promises in the political history of the
country, and of the plebiscite of the UK, whose two leaders of Brexit, Boris
Johnson and Nigel Farage, with a farrago of lies and dire fictions were able to
hoodwink a major part of the populace to vote for the exit of Britain from the
European Union. On a smaller scale this also has happened in the Australian
elections, when the Labor Party by its scare campaign that the Liberal
Coalition would privatize Medicare, succeeded in convincing a large part of the
electorate of this fictitious threat with the result of Liberals losing so many
seats that brought the country on the edge of a hang parliament.
How can one remedy the
weaknesses of democracy and protect its constituents from becoming victims to
populism and to demagogy with catastrophic results to the well-being of society
and to its continued economic prosperity? Some people believe that the answer
lies in bringing cultural and ethical changes among the people that would make
them immune to this toxic virus of populist-demagogy; and thus leading gradually
to the cashiering and inexorable dismissal of all demagogic and populist
leaders from the domain of politics. The difficulty and danger of such a
solution however is that cultural change is a slow process and during its gestation
and vicissitudes in a long run may in the meantime unhinge democracy from its
door of freedom, by the actions of feckless, inept, and irresponsible
politicians, and incarcerate it within the dungeon of dictatorship. A safer and
faster solution would be to enact radical changes to the electoral voting
system by suspending in certain circumstances temporarily parts of the
electorate from voting.
On what principle could one
suggest such an unequal voting system that would discriminate so deliberately
between social groups in the ambience of democracy, and which group would be
the unequal part in the democratic process? The guiding principle of the first
part of the question must explicitly aim to the continued viability and
stability of a democratic system, in the context of which, the economic
well-being of society depends and guarantees the further expansion of wealth that
renders to the people a wide choice where to employ their talents and skills
that would push their living standard onto higher plateaus and make their lives
congenial to their desires. The second part, i.e., the social group that would
be unequally treated, would be identified as that part that depends
on welfare for its living and as a ‘debtor’ client of the government easily
succumbs to populist slogans and rabble rousing; also, due to its low educational
level and lack of interest in important matters, it deprives it from having
adequate knowledge of the issues involved and hence is completely unqualified
to make a sober judgment on these issues. It is mainly this social group that
brings to power demagogues and millenarian ideologues that imperil the
stability of the polity and its economic system. And, indeed, ironically pits
this same social group into absolute poverty, and in turn destabilizes
democracy itself, as it has happened with the political rise of Hugo Chavez and
Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela; where its people after a contrived false
prosperity are presently hunting dogs and cats to feed themselves. The same has
happened with the Marxist Alexis Tsipras in Greece, where the pauperization of
many of its ordinary people is exacerbated every day and has reached unprecedented
high levels under his totally inept, ideologically barren and irresponsible
government.
The enactment of this
radical legislation would specifically suspend from the right to vote any
person who had been on social welfare or unemployed for more than a year, and
only with his/her ceasing on being on welfare or unemployed his/her right to
vote would be restored. Such legislation would not only strengthen and secure
the viability of democracy and the prosperity of its economic system, but would
also deprive populist demagogues and political parties of a constituency upon
whose existence they depend. Moreover, it would substantially reduce the spending
of the welfare state and make it less precarious to the fiscal policy of the
state and hence to the well-being of the country. This radical enactment takes
a leaf from the cradle of democracy in classical Greece, Athenian democracy.
The latter disenfranchised and suspended from voting citizens who had failed to
pay a debt to the polis. Likewise, in a modern democracy people who were in
debt for their living to the government, that is on
welfare, would be suspended from casting a vote.
Needless to say, such a
radical proposal, to occur in the ambit of the 'spoils' of the welfare state
that has spoiled at least two generations of people by our carefree and stand
at ease democracy, will not be easy to implement as it will rouse all the wrath
and opposition of the ‘progressive’ bien
pensants and the ‘good fellows’ of the dole. It will require
extraordinarily strong and sagacious political leadership tha will unite parliamentary
opposition parties into a gigantic wave that relentlessly will sweep away this ‘progressivist’
praetorian guard of the human rights, without responsibilities, of the dole
takers, and throw this defiance of the sanctimonious goody-goodies into the
dust bin of history.
I rest on my oars: Your turn now
