Planet Jackson Hole | DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS: Suppressing Dissent Planet Jackson Hole JACKSON HOLE, WY In police body-camera footage obtained by Democracy in Crisis, the scene in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 20, 2017, shows the war zone our nation really is right now. The balance of power in the battleboth on the streets then and in the ... |
Continue reading here:
DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS: Suppressing Dissent - Planet Jackson Hole
Armed with candles and Polish and EU flags,thousands of Poles gathered in front of the country's supreme court in Warsaw. They were there to support the country's judiciary in the face of the government's push to reform it. The protesters projected a statement onto the court building: "This is our court."
The demonstration, while moving, cannot paper over the fact that it amounted to a paltry, estimated 5,000 to 10,000 people in a city of nearly two million. Polls give the ruling, conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS) a consistent 35 to 40 percent approval rating, while the most important opposition party garners just 22 to 25 percent.
It is no wonder, then, that the PiS and its leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, feel confident in their ability to push through reforms of the supreme court and regular court system, following an already controversial reform of the Constitutional Tribunal.
Read more -Polish court reforms: What Jaroslaw Kaczynski actually proposes
Crude pretext
Their case against the courts has been building: Theylack democratic legitimacy, PiS lawmakers say judges are building a state within a state, lacking a "moral core;" and commit crimes that are covered up by their judicial colleagues. That is why, they say, the chief justice now needs to be appointed by the justice minister and the newly reformed National Council of the Judiciary.
Bartosz Dudek is head of DW's Polish department
It is not uncommon in democratic countries that judges are selected by lawmakers. But it is the fine print that counts, such as when it comes to who confirms the candidates. Generally the opposition also has a say, a check on power that the PiS reforms do not envision.
Pure partisan interests
The ruling party's unwillingness to compromise suggests that when the PiS talks about "democratic legitimacy" it actually means whipping partisans into line.
Much the same as with state media, which has been turned into an instrument of propaganda for the PiS under the banner of "news diversity," there is good reason to fear that when Jaroslaw Kaczynski speaks of "returning the courts to the people," he really means tightening his grip on power by way of his conservative revolution.
In Poland, it is the supreme court that certifies parliamentary elections. Should supreme court justices, as planned, be relieved of their posts and replaced by PiS loyalists, it would be unclear what would happen were the PiS to lose an election. The potential conflict of interest would be a catastrophe for democracy. As such, we can only hope that the thousands of protesters did not carry their candles to the supreme court in vain.
Original post:
Opinion: A catastrophe for Poland's democracy - Deutsche Welle
citizens or even law-abiding citizens. Photograph: Shelby Lum / Times-Dispatch/AP
In the middle of the hot summer, citizens will gather this week in Florida to champion a ballot initiative to end the states permanent felony disenfranchisement.
As we face the daily jaw-dropping revelations about the Trump campaign and administrations actions, keeping our focus on restoring legitimacy to our elections and our democracy has never been more important, and ending the historic wrong of felony disenfranchisement absolutely must be part of our agenda.
It seems unlikely that the Trump-Pence electoral integrity commission will touch this important issue, and any commission that ignores it isnt serious about the legitimacy of our elections.
The right to vote is the most fundamental right of any democracy, granting it legitimacy as a means of government by instilling power in the people and not in politicians. It ensures consent of the governed and holds government accountable to the people: not law-abiding people, or moral people, or any other qualifier, but the people.
This most fundamental right is not and never has been about rewarding good citizens or even law-abiding citizens. It is not a luxury or a reward, handed out by the government as it sees fit. It is a right, and should not be conditioned on anything more than citizenship, and being of voting age.
And yet since the civil war, states have intentionally denied the right to vote to a certain category of citizens those with a felony conviction. Today, felony disenfranchisement bars roughly 6.1 million citizens from the ballot box one in 13 African Americans nationally.
This denial of a right so inherent to democracy and to citizenship is not based on respect for the law, but is rather a historic and deliberate effort to prevent black people from voting.
Proponents of felony disenfranchisement argue that as a felon or former felon, an individual has shown a disregard for the law, and therefore must demonstrate respect for the law before being able to vote on issues related to law. Yet felony disenfranchisement did not originate, nor is it being maintained, out of any high reverence for the law: quite the opposite.
It was invented after slavery, when white elites sought to diminish the power of newly freed slaves. White politicians tied disenfranchisement only to those crimes believed to be disproportionately committed by black people. The sole objective was to prevent black citizens from threatening the power of the white elite an act fundamentally at odds with the very purpose of voting rights.
The discriminatory intent and impact of felony disenfranchisement is alive and well today. Those affected by disenfranchisement are disproportionately minorities and low-income citizens, voting groups that trend Democratic.
Moreover, the discriminatory politics and impact of todays mass incarceration cannot be separated from those of felony disenfranchisement. By doubling down on mass incarceration under President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and perpetuating felony disenfranchisement, the Republican party effectively blocks a determinative number of voters from voting, including in key battleground states.
Take Florida, for instance, where felony disenfranchisement bars nearly one in four black Floridians from voting. In tight races, that disenfranchisement can make or break an election. In 2000, an estimated 600,000 ex-felons were prevented from voting President George W Bush won Florida by just 537 votes.
Disenfranchisement is fundamentally undemocratic. And yet only two states in the country fully protect the right to vote and enable people who are incarcerated to vote (Maine and Vermont).
The rest of the 48 states disenfranchise voters, with some states restoring voting rights at certain stages after completion of ones sentence, parole or probation. Disenfranchisement is most illegitimate in Florida, Iowa and Kentucky, where a felony conviction costs a citizen his or her right to vote for life.
The only way to regain the right to vote in Florida, for instance, is to seek clemency from a court or the governor. This process is incredibly time intensive and has a low rate of success. Moreover, in clemency hearings, applicants are granted mere minutes to plead their cases, and can be asked any array of questions unrelated to their original conviction, including about acts of good citizenship and any traffic violations.
Citizens seeking clemency have already served whatever sentence, probation, and parole has been deemed appropriate by a court of law, and are back in society trying to successfully reintegrate. And yet a mere speeding ticket can be used to justify the permanent denial of their right to vote, forever making them a second-class citizen. Imagine if the right to free speech or religion were so conditioned.
There are 23 states that have expanded voting rights for former felons, and ending felony disenfranchisement is actually a bipartisan issue. Just recently, Alabama dramatically reduced the number of felonies that result in disenfranchisement. Florida could be next.
The Florida Rights Restoration Coalition is rallying volunteers of all backgrounds at a gathering this week to build momentum toward next years state ballot initiative, which would automatically restore voting rights upon the completion of ones sentence, parole, and probation.
Supporters of felony disenfranchisement argue that the current system is about preserving respect for the law. But they know better. Felony disenfranchisement has nothing to do with the law and everything to do with politics. It is an excuse to deny voting rights, just like voter ID laws and the literacy tests and poll taxes of old.
When a person is incarcerated, they do not lose their citizenship. We do not disown them and cast them from our borders. As citizens, they have a right to vote, and that right must be protected.
The alternative is to weaken our foundation as a democracy, at the expense of all of us. As citizens, we should seize the momentum building across the country and reject the Trump-Pence voter suppression commission, and instead champion the restoration of voting rights and our democratic legitimacy.
Read more:
America steals votes from felons. Until it stops, our democracy will be weakened - The Guardian
Opponents of Venezuelan President Nicols Maduro on Monday pledged to defy the government with escalating protest tactics, a day after showing their strength in an unofficial referendum that they said drew more than 7 million votes condemning his rule.
Leaders of the Democratic Unity coalition say they will bring the country to a halt with a 24-hour general strike Thursday, urging workers to stay home and businesses to shut their doors to protest Maduro's controversial plan to overhaul Venezuela's constitution.
They also invited Venezuelans who remain loyal to Hugo Chvez but dislike Maduro, his hand-picked successor, to join them in a unified front to stop the government from moving forward with a July 30 vote to elect delegates for a "constituent assembly" empowered to rewrite the 1999 constitution. Critics see the maneuver as a naked power grab that would amount to a death sentence for democratic rule.
"This is the zero hour," opposition lawmaker Freddy Guevara said Monday, characterizing upcoming protest measures as a last-ditch effort to save the country from full-blown dictatorship.
The U.S. government intensified the pressure on the Maduro government on Monday, with President Donald Trump vowing in a statement to "take strong and swift economic actions" if the July 30 vote took place. He called Maduro "a bad leader who dreams of becoming a dictator" and praised Sunday's referendum.
Maduro opponents likened the Sunday vote to an act of mass protest. Of the nearly 7.6 million Venezuelans said to have participated in the balloting - organized by opposition leaders, not election authorities - more than 98 percent voted to reject the government's plan to draw up a new constitution, opposition leaders said. The vote also urged Venezuela's armed forces to uphold the existing constitution and support early elections.
Michael Weissenstein and Fabiola Sanchez
Buoyed by those results, Guevara said, opposition lawmakers this week will also name new supreme court justices in a repudiation of the current court, which Maduro has stacked with loyalists. The move seems likely to deepen the standoff between Maduro and the opposition-controlled parliament, with the two sides on a path to developing competing legal systems.
On Monday, Socialist Party officials who back Maduro dismissed the 7.6 million vote tally as wildly inflated, claiming that opposition supporters voted multiple times and that the organizers of the referendum did not bother to actually count the ballots. They did not offer any proof to substantiate their claims.
But Flix Seijas Rodrguez, director of the independent Delphos polling agency, said he was "amazed by the results" of the referendum, given that it was organized in only three weeks and faced significant challenges. The Maduro government blasted the exercise as illegitimate and hurled threats at organizers while attempting to enforce a news blackout.
While waiting to vote at BienMeSabe Venezuelan Cafe and Restaurant, Carlos Eduardo Guzman explains why Venezuelan Americans are lining up to vote in the Venezuelan referendum on July 16, 2017, in Chicago. (Alexandra Wimley / Chicago Tribune)
While waiting to vote at BienMeSabe Venezuelan Cafe and Restaurant, Carlos Eduardo Guzman explains why Venezuelan Americans are lining up to vote in the Venezuelan referendum on July 16, 2017, in Chicago. (Alexandra Wimley / Chicago Tribune)
Anti-Maduro voters also faced the threat of violence. In one Caracas neighborhood, gunmen opened fire outside a polling station, killing one and injuring four.
On July 30, the Maduro government will ask Venezuelans to elect representatives for the constituent assembly. Government opponents see Maduro's effort to rewrite the constitution as potentially a fatal blow to what remains of Venezuelan democracy, particularly if the assembly allows the unpopular Maduro to remain in office beyond 2019, when his term is set to expire.
At least 92 people have been killed in more than three months of unrest and near-daily clashes between security forces and protesters. Opposition leaders said Monday that Venezuela's democracy had reached a tipping point, requiring an intensification of street demonstrations and defections from within the government.
"We interpret [the results] as a message from the people telling us to keep doing what we have been doing, plus much more," said Juan Andrs Meja, an opposition legislator who organized the referendum. "We will respond to that call accordingly."
Some opposition supporters said they were disappointed that the referendum fell short of the 11 million votes they were hoping for. The final reported tally of 7.6 million votes was also lower than the 7.7 million who voted for the opposition in 2015 parliamentary elections.
But analysts pointed out that the referendum was only symbolic, lacking the logistical support and infrastructure of an official election. Only about 15,000 polling stations were set up for the referendum, compared with more than twice as many during ordinary elections.
"This wasn't a presidential election," said John Magdaleno, a political consultant and the director of the Polity polling firm. "It's just an unofficial consultation."
Activists and analysts compared the turnout with the numbers of votes Chvez obtained when he held similar referendums.
Chvez never got more than 6.5 million people to vote in his favor in the referendums, analysts noted, and when Venezuela's economy was humming and he was reelected president in 2012, he obtained just over 8 million votes.
He died of cancer in 2013, and Maduro, his Socialist Party successor, has fared poorly in his shadow.
Despite the latest demonstration of opposition to his plans, few believe that Maduro is willing to change course. Dismissing the referendum results as inconsequential, he called on his opponents to "sit down to start a new round of dialogue" with his government.
Maduro's opponents are boycotting the July 30 vote, and in recent surveys, 85 percent of Venezuelans say they reject changes to the constitution.
"People will be disappointed if they expect the government to react directly to the results [of the referendum] or change anything," said Luis Vicente Len, a political analyst and the director of the Datanalisis polling agency, adding that the large turnout was important nonetheless.
"More than 7 million people participated actively in an act of civil disobedience and ignored the government's allegations that it was an illegal one," he said.
Read the original:
After protest vote, Maduro foes warn of 'zero hour' for Venezuela's democracy - Chicago Tribune
Defining democracy is no easy task. The elements of democracy are contextual. In its nascent form it may not include all the elements found and tested over time in mature liberal democracies. The period between October 1951 and March 1952 was a curtain raiser with the holding of the first general elections to the Lok Sabha. With the festival of elections held thereafter, we celebrate the peaceful transfer of power. The closing of the electoral process after each election is the first step in embracing democracy. After 69 years of Independence, what are the essential institutional elements necessary for us to be satisfied that democracy is alive and kicking in India?
First, we yearn for a media, objective on issues and fiercely independent in approach. Today, barring a few laudable exceptions, it has become a cheerleader of dispensations. Democracy loses much of its lustre in the absence of a vibrant fourth estate.
Second, we all aspire for an independent judiciary which is incorruptible. In the several tiers of the judicial system, some are perceived to have fallen apart. This is attributable not just to the quality of the manpower but to the appalling conditions under which it operates. At the highest level, haste, not studied reflection on issues, sours some outcomes. Retired judges of the Supreme Court have themselves lamented the state of the judiciary.
Third, investigation agencies must inspire confidence. The two elements required to instil confidence are quality manpower and absence of taint in investigation. Both elements are missing in the present investigation apparatus.
When investigating agencies do a U-turn, one limb of the investigation definitely stands tainted. The classic example of this U-turn was the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case. The National Investigating Agency (NIA) having taken over the investigation in 2011 filed a supplementary chargesheet in 2016 which stated that prosecution against six of the prime accused was not maintainable. This came after investigation had been completed and a 4,528-page chargesheet filed by the Maharashtra ATS. Such an obvious volte face defied logic. Such blatant partisan conduct erodes faith in investigating agencies.
The investigation agencies seem to collaborate with government to target the allegedly corrupt in Opposition and protect their own. While students and teachers landed in jail, named politicians have not even been investigated in the Vyapam scam. Similarly, no investigation is underway against all those involved in public distribution system scams in Chhattisgarh.
On the other hand, we witness the alacrity with which certain NGOs are being harassed and persecuted by launching multiple investigations against them. Convenient leaks by agencies help facilitate governments desire to damage reputations. The latest being targeting journalists and television channels, who the government considers to have been troublemakers in the past.
Fourth, spineless bureaucrats, committed to their own advancement, hesitant to speak their mind; coupled with an establishment that looks for hatchet men who will do their bidding. This has tarnished the bureaucrats image. The honest bureaucrat hesitates to take decisions lest years later, courts hold that he be prosecuted for deciding contrary to public interest. Strange but true. At that stage there is none to defend him.
Fifth, for a robust economy, merit-based arms-length lending is crucial. Today, over 17% of all bank loans are estimated to be non-performing. Erstwhile RBI governor Raghuram Rajan on August 11, 2014, stated: The crooked politician needs the businessman to provide the funds.....The crooked businessman needs the crooked politician to get public resources and contracts cheaply. That says it all.
Ultimately, the taxpayer has to pay for the reckless lending by banks. Gross NPAs of public sector banks as of 2014-2015 were about Rs 2.67 trillion. The situation has not improved since then. In fact, it has worsened as Gross NPAs stand at Rs 6.06 trillion as of December 2016. The present government is contemplating setting up a bad bank to take over dud loans to clean up the balance sheets of lenders. If implemented properly it may work.
Apart from these alarming institutional inadequacies, the situation is exacerbated by a government in which ministers await the nod of the all-powerful PMO and wherein secretaries of ministries, bypassing their ministers, deal directly with the PMO. We also witness the dilution of time-tested legislative processes by terming ordinary legislation as money bills ensuring they are not debated in the Rajya Sabha. All this is very worrisome.
While the election commission needs to be cheered, our institutions, the building blocks of democracy are woefully wanting. In fact, we have miles to go before we sleep.
Kapil Sibal is a Congress leader and former Union minister
The views expressed are personal
Continue reading here:
Five essential elements to keep democracy alive and kicking in India - Hindustan Times