Hey! the voting’s done . . .

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Dispatches from the 148 by Fred Ryan


Dispatches from the 148 by Fred Ryan

We’ve voted. The ballots are counted, and we’ve done our bit for democracy. Our new   mayors and councillors are looking around as the dust of the campaign   settles; they’re preparing files, reading old minutes and new notes. This is what the people around the world are fighting for, dying for, in fact. Egypt, Syria, Somalia, Honduras, North Carolina and Virginia – free elections, free choice, a free press, free speech, they’re dying for all this, which means democracy isn’t free at all. Giving up a life is the most expensive price, isn’t it? But in Canada we have it. For free. It’s so valuable here, and so cost-free, that actually most of us didn’t bother to vote. 
As long as there are election signs at the     corner, election flyers in the mail and ads in the Journal, we’re happily assured we have all that democracy promises.  We could vote, and that’s what democracy really means – we could do it, if we wished. We could vote for our choice, if we had ten minutes to spare.
Except that in many municipalities, mayors and the majority of councillors are unelected – they had no opponents.  So, after all, we couldn’t vote. If I wanted to vote for a mayor in my town, I would have had to run for the office. There was no contest. Does this mean we have no, or little, democracy? Isn’t it “no vote, no democracy”? 
But we all know for certain that Canada is a democracy, in every    corner of the country. We’re about to remember all the veterans who fought, and died, in several wars to guarantee our democracy. So we must have it, even if we can’t vote for a mayor or  councillor here and there.
Oh, a week ago members of the Liberal Party of Quebec, Pontiac       riding, picked the person to replace retiring MNA Charlotte L’Ecuyer. Another free vote in our free nation. Except that there were no debates, no real campaign promises, and, here’s the rub, no popular vote. Only card-carrying party members could vote, and over half of them didn’t bother, either. Given Pontiac’s iron-clad automatic     voting Liberal in every provincial election, this was in fact the vote for our MNA. Half of those who could vote didn’t, and probably ninety-plus percent of all citizens couldn’t vote at all, unless we bought party memberships.
No fault of the Liberals – the PQ, CAQ, Quebec Solidaire, the Greens, even the Bloc Pot and the Marxist-Leninists do the same. Party apparatchiks pick the candidates (one way or another), and party members get this choice. Finally, all of us, the great unwashed, select our choice from the parties. Around half of us don’t bother. That’s how we’re represented in Quebec City.
Democracy?
Half a continent away, our Prime Minister was meeting his party faithful in a Conservative national convention. Party members are picking issues and policies for our government to follow. However, this Prime Minister has already announced in the Throne Speech his own issues and measures, and with much of the nation riveted to the scandals in the Senate, the Prime Minister is telling us why there’s no scandal       concerning him, and    certainly not because he personally appointed these alleged fraudsters. The Prime Minister is not worried – as long as we keep tut-tutting the Senate and not examining details of the trade deal he’s just inked with the European corporations and consortiums on behalf of corporations and consortiums based here.
Democracy?
Yup, that’s what we call it.