I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.
THE-NOT-VOTER
9 The Informed Not-Voter
It is long overdue that the voter be given the opportunity to exercise hh (his-her) right to vote according to hh political orientation. The so-called democratic voting system today has long been flawed by repressing the full extent of a voter’s voting rights by way of holding voting to within a single political system and forbidding citizens to vote against it.
That is to say, the liberal democratic voting system has distinct parallels with the voting system of former Soviet Union, which, too, restricted the voter’s right to vote to a given set of candidates.
The present so-called “democratic” vote is limited to voting for a previously registered group of parties, which are legitimated if on Election Day they receive a given percentage of the public’s vote . In Latvia this percentage is 5% or more. However, it the voter decides that there are no parties that hh cares for (for whatever reasons of personal choice), hh is not given the opportunity to cast a NOT-VOTE. In other words, the voter is not given the opportunity to cast a vote against the ruling government system per se.
Whatever the merits of the Latvian Constitution (Satversme, a translation of the German word “Verfassung”), its capture by a partidocratic government, that is to say, a government whose inner core has been captured by certain corporate interests, has been compromised. Thus, the Latvian electorate has been manipulated by a government, which, to use the voters’ expression, “has stolen the nation”.
The particular “democratic system” of government in Latvia has been limited to “Parliamentary Democracy” and to the exclusion of a directly elected Democratic government. In short, the Government and not the electors control the Constitution by the method of institutionalized capture. However, democracy—if it is to have more than a cynical meaning—means that the sovereigns of the State and the Constitution are the people, the electors. The government is but the representative of the electors for a limited time, usually, four to five years.
As the system in Latvia stands at the present time, a voter cannot through hh vote bring about a truly changed government, but must, to use another people’s idiom, repeatedly “vote for the same old crabs”. It is time that the voters of Latvia understood that after twenty years of their “freedom” controlled by a captured government, they owe it to themselves to cast a NOT-VOTE. If they fail to do so, they not only vote themselves yet another corrupt government, but declare them selves as less sovereigns, more cowards.
Notwithstanding attempts by the “old crabs” to form a Unity Party (for an “honest” government of course), said coalition is simply another game of musical chairs. While the Unity Party ought to be working to institute the NOT-VOTE, it has manifested no such intentions. Indeed, the Unity may be planning to seize the Constitution in an even tighter grip than heretofore. They may borrow an action form the British government newly in office.
The coalition of Liberal Democrats and Tories in England wish to institute a law that would require that 55% of British MPs must approve any move to dissolve the Parliament. The plan to check a sovereign people’s right to request and dissolve the government (by going to the Queen) is in the name of “strong and stable government”. In the British case, this amounts to a gerrymander of the Constitution, because the dismissal of government would not be possible unless a large number of the ruling government’s deputies rebelled and voted against their own party. As an opposition member to the British government has stated, the institution of a de facto “fixed term parliament” will result in a "zombie government".
That the “stolen government of Latvia”, long in a zombie state all its own, may—by way of a gerrymander of yet another “new” Unity—attempt to seize control of a dysfunctional Latvian Constitution is probable, though no such a move has been announced. Such power-over moves often simply happen. This is why Latvians need to be on their guard and come October 2, 2010 chose to NOT-VOTE, to deny the government authority and force it to call a Constitutional Convention.
Why would Unity wish to capture and hold the dysfunctional Latvian Constitution in an tighter grip than before?
The answer is rather plain. The opposition to Unity happens to be a political party that, given the current political situation, has a potential of becoming a political movement, perhaps has already become such.
What this blogger called “The Tuned Center Party” (see Blog 4), re Saskaņas Centrs, despite my awkward translation, has its origins in an attempt to “atune” the political forces in post-Soviet Latvia. The Soviet Union had its own form of “globalization” of the people under its centralized control. As a result, the Baltic countries, Latvian including, saw an influx of Russians and Russian-speaking people. By some estimates this influx constitutes up to 35% of the current Latvian population. The Atune Party was formed to attempt to bridge the “people’s gap” in the renewed Latvian republic. However, a tight control over the Latvian Constitution checked the attempt, leaving many inhabitants of Latvia (about 250,000 out of a total population of 2.3 million) without Latvian citizenship even if many here are now living three generations.
Whatever the fears of ethnic Latvians of being swallowed by the Russian-speaking part of the public, the Parliamentary system under the control of Latvian was captured and corrupted by their own liberal capitalists. The latter are responsible for a capitalism of such clumsy nature that its “few rich-many poor Latvians” social order put the ethnic population into a death spiral. This fact is of course being ignored by not talking about it.
The failure of the Latvian partidocratic government has not gone unnoticed among the Latvians who indeed never favored Latvia as an apartheid State. In the opinion of the latter, the Atuned Party has an important political role to play. Only through dismissing a government with a dismal, even catastrophic record,, may Latvia recover both its identity and economy. However, the future cannot be more of the same no vision of the past twenty years or the no vision of the newly arrived Unity "reformers". The failed state must be taken down and rebuilt anew, but without peddling fear of Moscow only to have its neck collared by a leash of the West.
Asterisks & Other Readings
Compulsory voting in the EU Parliamentary elections
http://www.ceps.eu/files/book/1886.pdf
The abstentionist elephant
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8783/
Electronic polls
On the Meaning of Voting
http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/bylund/bylund1.html
British Government Attempts to Bracket the Constitution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8681624.stm
These blogs tend to be a continuum of an idea or thought, which is why—if you are interested in what you read—you are encouraged to consider reading the previous blog and the blog hereafter.
Partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline + Forum Home + Open Forum – The-Not-Voter. If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/
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