No Representation in lieu of the people

Parliaments are the backbone of traditional democracy as it exists today. A parliament is a misrepresentation of the people and parliamentary governments are a misleading solution to the problem of democracy. A parliament is originally founded to represent the people, but this in itself, is undemocratic as democracy means the authority of the people and not an authority acting on their behalf. The mere existence of a parliament means the absence of the people, but true democracy exists only through the participation of the people, not through the activity of their representatives. Parliaments have been a legal barrier between the peoples and the exercise of authority, excluding masses from power while usurping sovereignty in their place.

Peoples are left with only false external appearance of democracy manifested in long queues to cast their
votes in the ballot boxes.

Representation is a denial of participation

To lay bare the character of the parliament, we have to look to the origin of such a parliament. The parliament is either elected from constituencies or a party or a coalition of parties, or is formed by some method of appointment.

But all these procedures are undemocratic, for dividing the population into constituencies means that one member of parliament represents thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of people, depending on the size of population. It also means that the member keeps no popular organisational link with the electors since he, like other members, is looked upon as a representative of the whole people.

Representation is a falsification of democracy

This is what the prevailing traditional democracy requires. The masses, therefore, are completely isolated from the representative and he, in turn, is totally separated from them. For immediately after winning their votes he himself usurps their sovereignty and acts instead of them.

The prevailing traditional democracy endows the member of a parliament with a sacredness and immunity denied to other individual members of the people. That means that parliaments have become a means of plundering and usurping the people’s authority.

Hence the people have the right to struggle, through the popular revolution, to destroy instruments which usurp democracy and sovereignty and take them away from the masses. They also have the right to utter the new principle, no representation in lieu of the people.

If, however, the parliament emerges from a party as a result of winning an election, it is a parliament of the party and not of the people. It represents the party and not the people, and the executive power assigned by the parliament is that of the winning party and not of the people. The same is true of the parliament in which each party holds a number of seats. For the members of the parliament represent their party and not the people, and the power established by such a coalition is the power of the combined parties and not of the people. Under such systems the people are victims fooled and exploited by political bodies.

The people stand silently in long queues to cast their votes in the ballot boxes the same way as they throw other papers into the dustbin. This is the traditional democracy prevalent in the whole world, whether the system is one-party, two-party, multi-party or non-party. Thus it becomes clear that representation is fraud. Assemblies formed by a method of appointment or hereditary succession do not fall under any form of democracy. Moreover, since the system of elected parliaments is based on propaganda to win votes, it is a demagogic system in the real sense of the word. and votes can be bought and falsified. Poor people fail to compete in the election campaign and it is always the rich — and only the rich — who come out victorious.

Philosophers, thinkers and writers advocated the theory of representative government at a time when the peoples, without realising it, were driven like sheep by kings, sultans and conquerors. The ultimate aspiration of the people of those times was to have someone to represent them before such rulers. Even that aspiration was nullified. Peoples went through long and bitter struggles to attain what they aspired to. After the successful establishment of the era of the republics and the beginning of the era of the masses, it is unreasonable that democracy should mean the electing of only a few representatives to act on behalf of great masses. This is an obsolete theory and an outdated experience.

The whole authority must be the people’s. The most tyrannical dictatorships the world has known have existed under the shadow of parliaments.