The
remarkable characteristic of the parliamentary form of democracy is the fact
that a number of persons, let us say five hundred--including, in recent time, women
also--are elected to parliament and invested with authority to give final
judgment on anything and everything. In practice they alone are the governing
body; for although they may appoint a Cabinet, which seems outwardly to direct
the affairs of state, this Cabinet has not a real existence of its own. In
reality the so-called Government cannot do anything against the will of the
assembly. It can never be called to account for anything, since the right of
decision is not vested in the Cabinet but in the parliamentary majority. The
Cabinet always functions only as the executor of the will of the majority. Its
political ability can be judged only according to how far it succeeds in
adjusting itself to the will of the majority or in persuading the majority to
agree to its proposals. But this means that it must descend from the level of a
real governing power to that of a mendicant who has to beg the approval of a
majority that may be got together for the time being. Indeed, the chief
preoccupation of the Cabinet must be to secure for itself, in the case of' each
individual measure, the favour of the majority then in power or, failing that,
to form a new majority that will be more favourably disposed. If it should
succeed in either of these efforts it may go on 'governing' for a little while.
If it should fail to win or form a majority it must retire. The question
whether its policy as such has been right or wrong does not matter at all.
Thereby
all responsibility is abolished in practice. To what consequences such a state
of affairs can lead may easily be understood from the following simple
considerations:
Those
five hundred deputies who have been elected by the people come from various
dissimilar callings in life and show very varying degrees of political
capacity, with the result that the whole combination is disjointed and
sometimes presents quite a sorry picture. Surely nobody believes that these
chosen representatives of the nation are the choice spirits or first-class
intellects. Nobody, I hope, is foolish enough to pretend that hundreds of
statesmen can emerge from papers placed in the ballot box by electors who are
anything else but averagely intelligent. The absurd notion that men of genius
are born out of universal suffrage cannot be too strongly repudiated. In the
first place, those times may be really called blessed when one genuine
statesman makes his appearance among a people. Such statesmen do not appear all
at once in hundreds or more. Secondly, among the broad masses there is
instinctively a definite antipathy towards every outstanding genius. There is a
better chance of seeing a camel pass through the eye of a needle than of seeing
a really great man 'discovered' through an election.
If
then issue is one which affects their re-election, then Parliament becomes a
turbulent mass of people, all gesticulating and bawling against one another,
with a pathetic old man shaking his bell and making frantic efforts to call the
House to a sense of its dignity by friendly appeals, exhortations, and grave
warnings. One could not refrain from laughing.
And
if some matter of real public good if at all comes before it courtesy
'executive', the House would be practically empty. MPs would be sleeping in the
other rooms. Only a few deputies in their places, yawning in each other's
faces. One is speechifying. A deputy speaker is in the chair. When he looked
round it was quite plain that he too felt bored.
Kapil
Dev Aggarwal;
Sources;
“Mein
Kampf”
