PAPER BY FREDERICK FORSYTH,

CHAIRMAN, CONGRESS FOR DEMOCRACY CONSTITUTIONAL COMMITTEE and MEMBER OF THE CONGRESS FOR DEMOCRACY STEERING COMMITTEE

PRESENTED TO THE SIXTH CONGRESS FOR DEMOCRACY

on Friday 13 July 2001

 

PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY

Of all the governmental systems known to man, the greatest is parliamentary democracy.

Parliamentary democracy alone will suffice, now and forever, as the governance of Great Britain and the British people.

This democracy is a complex and fragile system, not easy to acquire and hard to maintain, being only maintained by the constant vigilance of the governed.

Parliamentary democracy can only exist where certain criteria are constantly fulfilled, and these criteria are:

1. The basis of parliamentary democracy is the political party, being a voluntary association of free people who have come together without coercion or inducement because they share common hopes, aspirations, beliefs and commitments in the government of themselves and their fellow citizens.

2. There must exist more than one political party, for a one-party state cannot, a priori, constitute a parliamentary democracy.

3. The existence of two or more political parties shall not preclude the right of much smaller parties or even a single independent candidate from standing for office.

4. No political party or independent candidate shall be forbidden to stand for office unless that party or candidate is clearly dedicated to the fomentation of inter-ethnic, racial or religious hatred, or to the violent subornment or overthrow of democracy.

5. The parties shall have the right to put forward candidates, in rivalry to each other, to represent the people in the parliament of the democracy.

6. The election of the candidates shall take place in full, free and fair general elections, to be held simultaneously across the territory of the democracy.

7. Such general elections shall be held periodically, not less frequently than the constitution demands.

8. The political party gaining the election of the largest number of candidates, either with a clear majority over all other elected candidates or in alliance with other parties, shall have the right to form the next government.

9. All other parties shall then form the Opposition and shall have the right and duty to oppose, criticise and hold the incumbent government to account at all times.

10. The first building block of the parliamentary democracy is the constituency, the number of which and population of which shall be decreed by an impartial body utterly independent of the incumbent government at all times.

11. The core of the constituency is the local party association, which shall have the right to choose the candidate of its choice, without coercion or inducement from party headquarters, for the system of selection and allocation of candidates by party headquarters marks the start of the death of parliamentary democracy.

12. After due and democratic election, an incumbent government shall be held constantly accountable to the people for its actions, taxations and expenditures by, among others, multi-party committees of scrutiny, an independent Upper House and a Free Press.

• Once elected within the ambits detailed above, Parliament shall be the sovereign authority of the nation state in all things, carrying an authority that cannot be subordinated to another body external to the nation state save under certain conditions which are:

(a) all significant transfers of parliamentary sovereignty and authority, whether by Act or Treaty, shall only be licit if this intention to transfer was specifically described in the party manifesto before the general election, or:

(b) if the transfer was specifically endorsed by a clear majority of the electorate in a full, free and fair national consultation, such consultation to be by national referendum.

OTHER THAN IN THESE CIRCUMSTANCES, NO GOVERNMENT IN A PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY SHALL COMMIT ALL SUBSEQUENT GOVERNMENTS TO AN ACT THAT CAN NEVER BE REPEALED NOR A TREATY THAT CAN NEVER BE REVOKED.

 

CONCLUSION

By the conditions above, the governmental institutions of the European Community cannot qualify as a parliamentary democracy or any other kind of democracy, for three reasons:

1. The over-arching governmental body of the European Union is the European Commission, which is not directly elected and disposes of powers far beyond any normal civil service.

2. The European Commission is not in practice in any way subordinate to, or subservient to, the European Parliament.

3. More than half the members of the European Parliament owe their office to the 'closed list' system whereby candidates are selected by party machines and then allocated to the various constituencies they purport to represent. As such they are not tribunes of the peoples of Europe but voting machines selected by party hierarchs. This system is not merely antipathetic but exclusive to the concept of parliamentary democracy.