It was U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, in his fabled 1863 Gettysburg address, who spoke of “government of the people, by the people and for the people.”
He was speaking to a nation, deeply divided after a bloody Civil War, about the importance and value of citizen-led democracy; governments chosen and operated by citizens, in the interests of citizens.
While he was extolling the virtue and potential of his beloved, deeply torn republic, the same words and aspirations are easily applied to any democracy.
Lincoln would likely be deeply disappointed with what has become of governments in democracies the world over, including his own and ours.
While democratic governments are still chosen by citizens and comprised of citizens, they increasingly operate in their own interests.
Nova Scotia, home of Canada’s longest established “responsible” government, provides a clear and valuable example of this.
Only three months ago, a premier who once promised to end partisan manipulation of the electoral process by imposing a legally fixed election date, repudiated his own argument and his own law by calling an early election. A few weeks later, he was not reprimanded by the electors for what he did but rewarded by them with a sweeping mandate and a “super majority”; so many seats in the legislature that his government can unilaterally change the rules and procedures of the legislature without the consent of the opposition parties.
The super majority is abolishing the fixed election date and raising the salaries of all members of the legislature, particularly those of its own members – all of whom are ministers or ministerial assistants or house officials. It is reducing time allotted for debate (criticism) in the house, changing the process that allowed laws to be amended by committee, and, most significantly, curtailing the power and the authority of its watchdog and critic, the auditor general, by reserving the right to withhold auditor general reports from the public and to fire the Auditor General without cause.
All of these changes were introduced on the same day a provincial budget fulfilled several campaign-promised tax cuts, producing a large deficit and promises of even larger provincial debt to come.
Similar recent behaviour in the United States, the simultaneous release of numerous executive actions on a single day or days, has been aptly described as “flooding the zone” with so much information that opponents, journalists and the public are unable to keep up with it all, let alone respond to it.
Compounding all of this, the premier has decided to stop taking reporters’ questions in the legislature (ironically, just feet from where Joseph Howe established the concept of freedom of the press almost two centuries ago), moving the whole process to a theatre across the street, stage managed by the government’s own communications handlers.
When the people chose to give a government a “super majority,” they established the mandate that allows this government to do all these things. It was an expression of the public will (intentional or unintentional) but it’s difficult to see how these actions serve the public interest.
Government doing pretty much whatever it wants, however it wants, whenever it wants, with much less scrutiny, accountability or criticism, is the very definition of government of the people, by the people and for the government.
