A failure or success?

On Vallentuna Municipality Web is a poor tab called “Democracy”. There are no links to Demoex site or any politician’s blog on the municipality’s website. Election day is in September 19. I think blog publishing would be a good way to inform voters on the political alternatives before the election. Therefore I put to a written question the City Council on June 14: Are we going to use a blog publishing service at the Democracy tab before the election?

I directed the question to the Municipal Mayor. Two days later I call him to check that he has got it. “Yes, but I will not answer the question because it was submitted too late”, he says. I get upset, because the municipality’s statute says that a question should be answered in the same meeting that it is provided. The next City Council is not until September 6, then it is too late to start blogging before the election. Therefore it is desirable to receive a response at this meeting.

City Council meeting on 14 June begins. Chairman would usually ask “Are there any questions?” Instead, he says:
– And we have no questions.
– Yes we have, I say
– No, it came too late, he replies.

I tell the audience that Demoex have submitted a written question. Chairman interrupts and say that I am not allowed to ask the question. When I start to argue why it should be answered at this meeting, the Chairman shouts “QUIET!”.

I was not even allowed to ask the question! Later on at the same meeting I complain to the elective dictatorship in the council, and takes the fact that I was not allowed to ask a question earlier as an example. Once again the Chairman tells me to be quiet.

Political repression means that a stronger party unfairly exercise its power to prevent a weaker party from participating. After ten years in prison under Ian Smith‘s racist regime, Robert Mugabe took over in Zimbabwe with the Socialist party ZANU-PF. He was greeted as a liberator. Thirty years later with unbroken power holding from Mugabe, his opponents are repressed in a similar way as he was.

Long, uninterrupted possession of power easily leads to systematic repression of dissidents. My point is that political repression is a structurally shortcoming of the representative democratic system. The problem does not depend on the ideology of the ruling party.

This entry was posted on June 16, 2010 at 9:15 pm and is filed under Demoex. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.