Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Friday, June 10, 2011

Other Doug plays with political dynamite

As right-wing pols go, deputy Mayor Doug Holyday is not as partisan as some who make up Rob Ford’s inner circle jerks.

If you watch Holyday closely enough at council meetings, you might catch a smile wrinkling his lips on those occasions when he stands in the chamber to do nothing more than toe the party line – which is often these days.

What to make, then, of the political dynamite he’s playing with – namely, his idea of redrawing electoral boundaries to more accurately reflect the population in each ward? Sounds too democratic to be true.

Holyday says he’s pitching the plan in the interest of “fairness.”

It’s tempting to view his initiative as a political boon for the downtown, where condo growth has upped the numbers living in the core. Some on the left certainly have. They were under the impression – mistaken, it turns out – that Holyday’s realignment would mean a more equitable distribution of seats, the current 44 wards either realigned or a few more added to take into account population growth.

Maybe someone in the mayor’s office got to the deputy mayor.

Cuz now he’s talking, to me at least, about going along with the mayor’s plan to halve the number of council seats from the current 44 to 22. Where the mayor and his deputy diverge is on Holyday’s preference for an elected board of control – eight members chosen citywide, two for each of the four districts – to replace the executive committee currently handpicked by the mayor. That comes as news to Adam Vaughan, who has been commiserating with Holyday on the subject of ward boundaries.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Why would Ford’s go-to guy on the inner workings of government hatch a plan to weaken the power of the hand that feeds him? The answer is that he’s not.

Full Article
Source: Now 

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