a commentary from ZRT Founder-President Miestrâ Schivâ
By the time this column sees the light of day, the Talossan Republic will have a new government – one including members from four different political parties which clashed at the last Chamber election, plus independents. The Government of National Unity – an idea which has been promoted and prayed for across the political spectrum for months – seems about to happen.
But something else seems to be happening something that the new Information Minister, Dp. Crovâ, has been wanting for even longer. In a sense, since the election of the Sixth Chamber finished, a new historical era has dawned – a new Republic, a relaunched Talossa.
It’s been generally common opinion that the nastiness and bitter personal attacks we are all familiar with from the dark days of Talossan history were due to the personality of the former monarch. The experiences of the first three years of the Talossan Republic might indicate otherwise. When I first joined the Republic, I admitted a preference for the STV system we have now, but thought that a party-list system would be more in keeping with Talossan tradition. I now see this as a mistake. The party-list system – or as I now call it, the gang-warfare system – was certainly part of Talossan tradition – exactly those parts which we had the Revolution to get away from.
A small voluntary community of a few dozen people cannot afford “permanent factionalisation” – whether a nationette or a political party. I come from the tradition of radical-left politics, where splits, fusions, faction fights and shady backroom vendettas are notorious. These don’t seem to happen so much, though, in those organizations where permanent factions are banned or discouraged. The rule in the political organization I belong to, for example, is you are allowed to get together a faction to push your idea at the national conference, but once the question is settled by majority vote, all factions have to dissolve.
Let’s take that lesson in the Talossan Republic. In an organization where you actually want to do something, anything which encourages members to scheme and plot against each other rather than to pull together for common goals is very bad news. Temporary factionalisation is healthy and necessary when there’s a real difference of opinion that needs to be sorted out. Permanent factionalisation is another word for civil war. Who wants to join an organization – or nation – which is in civil war?
The old electoral system institutionalized parties, on the basis that it would mean a broader range of people getting involved in politics. But what it really led to was battle-lines being drawn-up even when there was no battle to fight. The question of who would be government and who stuck in opposition became the essential questions of our elections – and sometimes, imaginary points of difference were created to justify a new party realignment. Instead of bring our nation forward, ignorant political armies clashed by night and day over which direction to go in. And when the fighting was done, the winning side was generally too exhausted to do anything but plot the next way to get one over on the opposition.
A party system, or a faction system, is appropriate where there is real and fundamental debate on where our nation goes in the future. The glorious thing about Single Transferable Vote is that parties are an option – and if they decide to run they will get their fair share of seats, assuming that their voters are disciplined – but not an essential. Note that the vituperation and nastiness of the election campaign evaporated overnight when it became clear that people on both sides were connected by far more than divided them. It’s too early to predict what’s going to happen with the new Governamáintsch dàl Viênsità Naziunál, but at the moment people who recently were accusing one another of treason and mental illness are chomping at the bit, not for another fight, but to actually get down to work for the first time in six months.
Will our democracy be ruined with no “official” opposition? I don’t think so. Our Constitution has been criticized sometimes for requiring “too many warm bodies”. But it has meant that the executive and legislature have not fused, even without a formal opposition. There is one member of the Government who can’t be a legislator (the President) and one legislator who can’t join the Government (the Túischac’h). Even in a situation of national unity, there will still be a High Court and Secretary of State ready to defend the citizens against their own Republic if need be.
Let’s face the fact that, right now, we are pretty much all agreed on what needs to be done. It may be strange carrying on in our national journey without factional fist-fighting, but given the personalities of our elected politicians, we are absolutely certain that the Chamber of Deputies will continue to see intense debate over various legislative projects. This is as it should be – until such time as a real debate opens up over our future, in which case certainly party lines will be drawn and an Opposition will form inside or outside the Chamber.
Our good friend Adiêns Glaçâ is correct that only a shared national narrative will guarantee the Talossan Republic a future. He is absolutely right. But our old government/opposition, permanent-faction model made absolutely sure that this would never happen. A shared national narrative could coexist with a gang-warfare political culture in organization where an acknowledged or hidden Supreme Leader was really in charge. Those with Google might want to compare how King Robert I operated to how various leaders of political cults like Jim Robertson, Gerry Healey or Bob Avakian operated. But we can’t have a Supreme Leader in the Talossan Republic basically because no-one has the time and energy. We need to all work together to make this happen.
Let’s hope that the Second Republic, the Post-Party Republic, will help make this a reality. Let’s not look back on June 1 2014 with the same nostalgia and sad “it might have been”s as those of us who were in Penguinea did on September 26 2007.
