We, the People

Dear Editor,

For the last 40 years, We the People have been asleep and the awakening was brutal. Wrapped in the pleasant warmth of our materialistic well-being, We have forgotten. We have forgotten that in a democracy, We have the power As We have forgotten that democracy is the result of numerous years off struggle and sacrifices. For the last 40 years We have forgotten that democracy was gained by previous generations, as We have forgotten that many off them have lost their life in the struggle for democracy, many times under attack. We have forgotten that in democracy, the MPs and the ministers, including the PM, are our representatives, as We have forgotten that they are supposed to work for us and that they are paid with our money and not with their party’s money. In our deep sleep populated with materialistic dreams, We didn’t realise that our vigilance was down and power was slipping from our hands. From time to time about half off us woke up a bit and like sleepwalkers, We went to vote. The awakening was brutal but thankfully it is not too late to take back our role as the source of power in democracy. We have to begin by recognizing that the power wasn’t snatched from our hands but We have let it slip away. We have to understand that as power holders We must hold accountable the ones to whom We have temporarily delegated power. At the beginning off our awakening, when there were only a few hundreds signatures on Facebook, Stephen Harper showed a profound disdain for We the People declaring that it was irrelevant. Being used to seeing us sleeping for the last 40 years, he didn’t realise that by proroguing the Parliament for partisan interests, he had rung the alarm and woken us up. Make no mistake; it is not a partisan issue. Stephen Harper has pushed only a little further than previous PMs. Before him, other Conservative and Liberal PMs took advantage off our sleep to appropriate a little bit more of the power slipping from our hands. The struggle for democracy must be non-partisan because without democracy there are no parties. The 216,000 members of the group Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament must stay awake after January 23, 2010 and they must become the guardians of democracy. And this without partisanship. Conservatives, Liberals, NDPs, Bloquistes and Greens, all together, We have to ask our leaders to put into their platforms for the next election the restoration of parliamentary democracy as part of our democratic system. Corneliu Kirjan, Cornwall