A PARABLE OF LIBERTY LOST AND FOUND — Part 4 of 10: Balance of Powers
Over time, distinct districts develop. Aristocratic families on gated estates run each district. Every ruling family has a spokesman. The strongest voice in the northern district is Albert Zack Cartman, a firebrand preacher with a wide following.
Cartman is among the clergy proclaiming a new religion. He believes all people are born sinful, doomed to perdition, yet people can be saved through pure faith and good works. Salvation and a place in Heaven depend upon obeying the law of the land. Defiant ones go to Hell. The religion becomes a powerful voting block and cultural influence.
The new religion blames women for man’s fall from grace, so men must rule women. The husband owns the wife, especially her womb. A woman’s place is in the home, birthing sons. Unmarried women are shamed and relegated to menial jobs beneath men. Men in the new religion promise to live pure and spread the faith. They promise to preserve the brotherhood of dominant men. To keep women down, men push through a new constitutional amendment denying women the right to vote.
More constitutional changes loom.
District leaders want the assembly to pass laws favoring their districts (fiefdoms), especially their commercial interests. Standing in the way, every elected delegate is held accountable to all voters islandwide. The constitution impedes districts from passing special-interest legislation. Al Cartman sees the situation as a career opportunity.
He joins a campaign amending the constitution to change how congress is elected. Each district will now elect its own representative. No more islandwide delegates.
Representatives should vote in the assembly the same as the vast majority in their district would vote if all were present. Each would be mindful of everyone on the island.
Lip service. In reality, secret deals decide which bills become laws, and new laws invariable benefit rich and powerful men in one district or another.
Cartman is elected to represent the north district. He is celebrated as a local hero.
A year later, a leading island newspaper exposes that Cartman took bribes from Landlop Mining. Cartman is shamed and blamed as a national bad guy.
A contrite sinner caught in the act, Cartman confesses all. He seeks forgiveness. He admits payments to propose and sponsor a new law granting total immunity to water polluters. He accepts his hypocrisy and immorality. He apologizes with abject humiliated humility, resigns his seat in congress, repays the bribe in full, and withdraws in disgrace.
Cartman aside, polluter immunity impunity remains in force as Law.
The Cartman scandal prompts loud public cries to curb such abuses of power with “checks and balances” in government.
After long debate and nested side deals, the congress and voters agree to amend the constitution again to change the nature and structure of their republic.
This deed is done in the name of all people on the island, which by now is calling itself a nation.
They establish a “separation of powers” between three branches of government — legislative, executive and judicial.
Each separate branch is trusted to check abuses by the other branches.
In practice, rather than serve all the people all the time, each branch competes for aristocratic favors.
The legislative branch divides into two chambers. An upper house or senate represents the lordly families. A lower house represents the common people. Each chamber of the new “congress” or parliament checks the power of the other chamber.
In practice, any man who wins a seat in either legislative body reaps a lifetime of comfort from bribes by lobbyists buying votes in both chambers. Rather than curtailing corruption, doubling the island assembly houses instead quadruples the corruption.
The executive branch administers the laws enacted by congress.
Responsibilities include all civil service functions, such as food and food safety, island road and harbor construction, and national law enforcement.
To coordinate all the administrative actions, the constitution provides for a chief executive officer, called a president or prime minister. For legitimacy, the president must be elected by a popular vote of the people.
Like the legislators, the president always a man.
The legislative and executive branches supposedly balance each other’s powers.
The house and senate must ratify or deny any administrative budget proposed by the president, so the congress can check the executive.
Bills passed by congress do not become law until signed by the president, so the executive can ratify or deny any legislation before it becomes law. The president may veto any law passed by congress, so the president can check the legislature. Congress may vote to override a veto, but not easily.
A president can give directives to his administrators on how to implement or carry out the laws passed by congress, but a president may not create any new laws. The right to write laws belong to congress alone.. A president may not proclaim edicts like a king.
The ideal is not the reality.
A frustrated president one day asserts a right to issue executive orders that flout the will of congress. Disputes between the president and congress may wind up in court.
The judiciary can check abuses of power by the executive branch and the legislative branch. The courts are supposed to be the impartial arbiter of all disputes.
All judges must be nonpartisan, above politics, sensibly and fairly applying the law of the land to decide all civil and criminal cases.
Courts must apply the law as it exists in every ruling. The courts may not create any new laws. The right to write laws belongs to congress alone.. Courts may not replace congress as the creator of new laws.
Such is the ideal of presidential and congressional power checked by an independent judiciary.
In practice, the president nominates all judges for life. Each judge needs a senate vote of confirmation. The senate is loyal to island lord. The lower house has no vote on judicial appointments.
In practice, judges who sit on bench are only men (never women) loyal to the old boys network. Loyalist judges decide all legal disputes affecting the elites and the island.
In this way, the rich and powerful become the ones responsible for running the government, and people are fooled into thinking they still have a democracy. So long as the people believe they still have a vote and a fair say, the government may govern.
The sham republic lasts as long as enough people do not question authority and generally behave themselves.
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Excerpt from the expanded preamble for
MAKING GLOBAL SENSE
Grounded hope for the 21st century
inspired by Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.
(http://globalsense.com)
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or places is entirely coincidental or is intended purely as an allegorical satire, parody or spoof of such person, event or place, and is not intended to communicate any true or factual information about that person, event or place.
