Government - April 01

It is clear that the state must be the institution to make the laws, you cannot privatise the legislature. Why? Well, clearly if this process was in private hands the primary interests that would be served would be those of the controller. This would not be a helpful way to govern at least not for the majority of the population. Why is it then that there are those who imagine that one can privatise various public utilities and yet these will continue to serve the public interest?


With the state making the laws there are some factors that need to also be in place to safeguard the public good. Firstly it is important that laws being made are communicated properly, punctually and comprehensibly to the populous. The population should be given the chance to discuss the legislation and should certainly be made aware as far as possible when legislation is passed. The media is the natural apparatus to carry out this function, as if it is under the control of the state it will be able to best appraise the statutes and act as an interpreter to inform the people. At this point I am sure there are doubters who will presume that if the media is in state hands it will be bound to be biased toward that state and therefore cannot be relied upon to give an objective viewpoint or critique. I would draw the example of the BBC as part of debunking this whole argument. There are a handful of political interviewers who are well respected within the media sector and well feared by politicians, as they do not pull their punches calling ministers to account, most of these high-profile interviewers work for the BBC. As commercial television and media is beholden to its advertisers it can never be fully objective as there will always be a conflict of interest when it comes to an argument over corporate legislation. The BBC is not dependent on advertising revenue and is therefore able to afford its journalists more freedom to go ‘for the jugular’. Let us not assume that the BBC is independent, it is under state control and it would be foolish to imagine that at certain points the government has not exercised its influence in order to serve its purposes, however these occasions are, I would suggest, many fewer than in the private sector. The government of the day must be held directly accountable for its actions. If a law is proposed within a particular sector then the minister responsible for that brief must be obliged to give interview to the state media and be questioned most strongly to justify the policy, if the law is a good one, it should be easy to do so, if the law cannot be justified then perhaps it should be dropped or modified. Furthermore the same rules should govern a minister’s justification of his/her behaviour which should be subject to a stringent code of conduct. If a minister is proven to have violated this code in front of an extra-parliamentary standards committee then said minister should be dismissed forthwith and a replacement sought with immediate effect.

This also leads me to look at the whole setup of government. The bipartite system is not conducive to good government. It leads to the polarisation of politics into extremes and also means local issues are often swept underfoot for centralised political reasons. It is vital that if a person is to represent an area that they are standing for that area, they either come from or have been resident for some time in that area. It is an unacceptable practise for representatives to have multiple residences and to stand in an area in which they are not based. The state should provide apartments for the representatives when they are required for central governmental duties.


The Second Chamber
It appears to be a given in a democracy that one have a second chamber of the legislature. Let us for the moment proceed without questioning this, we must first establish what this chamber is for and then populate it with those best suited to serve out this purpose. Let us say that we wish to have a second chamber as a safeguard mechanism, an overseer of the acts of the first chamber. This would be by design a way of tempering politics and regulating the first chamber. If this is the case then obviously the first chamber must not have the appointment rights for its own regulator this must be done independently. One could say, why not let the people decide this and this idea has merit, but one must then be sure that the people are able to have a good choice of candidates. These candidates must be chosen from the people and therefore the best way to ensure competency is to educate the entire populous to have the ability to serve should they wish to do so. This is the volition approach; allow the people the ability and opportunity to help in the process of government. The other method is a more forceful one, a system similar to that of the UK Jury service be set up. This means that people would be called up to serve in the second chamber; this would be a mandatory service. There are pros and cons to both of these suggestions, the first is open to corruption and rigging to get certain people elected, apathy and disinterest in the voting procedure and a second chamber populated by people who may or may not be competent to carry out the job. It is my theory that the problem of corruption would be hard to tackle but not insurmountable if properly scrutinised, wages for those serving in the second chamber should not be an incentive as those interested in serving should be doing so for their interest in government and not in financial gain. The problem of apathy is something that would need to be tackled at an early age by education. If people are taught how there government works and how they can make a difference the procedure of government is likely to be of more interest to them. Apathy occurs where a person either does not understand the system or believes his/her input to have negligible impact. Competence is difficult to asses before someone takes up a post but if serving terms are short then it should have minimum impact should their suitability be called into question, besides it is important to give those interested a chance as they may have crucial input no matter how insignificant it may seem at the time. If people are educated as to how their government works they should be able to take more of an interest in it and it is therefore far more likely that they will be able to make a valuable contribution.

The second approach to the second chamber recruitment poses more problems. Whilst giving people social responsibility is a good thing and makes them feel part of the collective it is a fine line between this and making people feel press-ganged. The forced approach is also no guarantor for competence although under the conditions already outlined this should not be a major issue. However it is important that people feel they are willing participants in the collective and not herded into every facet of their lives by an omnipresent, omni-cogniscient state, as this would just be retreading the steps to totalitarianism.