Submission WEST-0066
Submission By
John Allen West Address
Hornby Island, BC, Organization
Date
20040114 Category
Citizens' Assembly process, Electoral system change, Other Abstract
Submission # 2, January 14th, 2004 Towards Individual and Collective Enlightenment and Well-being
There’s Fun to Be Had, Free United Natives, ‘We are all natives of this Planet’.
To the Randomly Selected Members of the Citizens’ Assembly
Ladies and Gentlemen, I was an observer of the first meeting of the Citizens’ Assembly.
The Citizens’ Assembly is, as a matter of fact, a Liberal Party knock-off of the idea of the sampling or random selection process, our home-grown, made in BC, 'None Of The Above' (NOTA) electoral alternative. This is a well-developed concept which has been in the hands of two Chief Electoral Officers and at least four Attorneys General, and the Lieutenant Governor for at least seven years - though you wouldn’t know it.
There is this vital difference -- that in the NOTA system you would have self-selected, i.e. you would have exercised the political savvy of your own sovereignty (choicemaking), by having voted NOTA on the ballot in an election. This simply means you would have rejected party-selected candidates or independents with your vote. You would have chosen to trust in the potential for untainted political integrity of the larger population around you, .i.e. the will of the people towards individual and collective well-being.
This Liberal Administration is blind-siding the public. I have published my analysis of this action and you will find a copy of this three page letter of April 29th, 2003 in my first submission to the Assembly web site [West 0010] and at www.animalvoices.org/NOTA.
By appointing you, using the NOTA system in a limited and inappropriate way, they have gained a temporary advantage for their corporate capitalist backers. This advantage is that they do not have to face the inevitable wrath of the voters until 2009 (i.e. two elections from now). Should the people of B.C. Have a chance to use the model of your Assembly for a Constituent Assembly and vote for the None of the Above Option in great numbers, there is a possibility of a landslide victory for out-of-the-box common sense and an end to the profession of politics.
This Constituent Assembly would replace the outworn Westminster system of public power brokerage, often fairly described as a “Cabinet dictatorship,” i.e. in-camera cabinet deliberations which are political in nature. These have been used to structure the mandate of the Citizens’ Assembly and ought not structure the non-partisan electoral deliberations of your assembly, as they are doing at this time.
The Westminster system attempts to fulfill the intentions of such men as Montague Norman, a former Chairman of the Bank of England, that “the Hegemony of World Finance should reign supreme over everyone, everywhere as one whole super-national control mechanism”.
Unless counteracted at the next election, a world-wide economic enslavement and corporate prison state could control our province even more brutally, thus rendering more likely the possibility of a revolution, rather than an evolution of our Electoral Processes.
Wake up, folks and smell the roses. You are part of something really powerful, healthy and fun, if you work together and stay confident of your own common sense, observations, and reason. Don’t let academic wordiness or the arbitrary narrow focus of hidden agendas of the Liberal administration distract you from why you came and what you want for the people of B.C. lf you don’t know yet, listen to your fellow assembly members and people in your communities.
The Liberal administration is not bound to accept even a consensus from you. Many of you came in full knowledge of this fact and became involved anyway, rising above the cynicism around you. You were selected randomly and I have observed that you are caring, respectful people with intelligence and heart, just as I predicted to the naysayers in government and institutions of propaganda.
As an immigrant, non-partisan, trained and experienced observer in Canada for 44 years (having emigrated from England) I consider there never has been a people more capable than British Columbians of managing their affairs of State in a compassionate and intelligent manner, given the chance to vote the NOTA option -- eliminating the hidden agendas and dirty tricks and blue meanness of political parties of all stripes.
If we adopt the NOTA voting option, and it becomes our unique style of Direct Democracy for REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT, and if it were popular enough to send a majority of non-party representatives to Victoria, these would form a consensus-seeking caretaker government of the "common sense" Centre, a very far cry from the adversarial politics of our time. A new era of participatory good management of collective affairs would ensue.
Towards reconciliation with the Aboriginal Peoples, another randomly selected representative in each riding could be selected from a separate pool of First Nation and Metis NOTA voters, with their approval. This could lead to an honourable and permanent settlement of land ownership and management issues, and this would bring about a new quality of equality and unite the people in an attitude of care for this mother, our children’s’ native land. These are matters which your Assembly and subsequent randomly selected assemblies might address.
As a profession, politics attracts the wannabe dominators among us. It has been with us as a sub-species for so many generations that it has - in addition to a means to a fat paycheck for the few - become identifiable as a caste. If I seem to you somewhat harsh towards the professional political power grabbers, you might want to read Mark Twain’s satirical novel, “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”.