THERE is a political wave that is growing and moving around the globe. It is the people wanting to take back their power from governments. In the second paragraph of the United States Declaration of Independence, it is written: “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The words “consent of the governed” washed away thousands of years of monarchies and warlords, who imposed their will without the people having a say in who would rule them.
The people of the Catalonia region of Spain were a sovereign state from the 12th century until they were united with Castilian Spain by a marriage of their respective monarchs in 1469. Now in 2015 they have elected a political party that will move toward complete and irrevocable sovereignty because it is the people’s will.
The United Kingdom will vote in the next year or so to completely break from being a member of the European Union because the people feel that the politicians pushed for inclusion without considering the country’s best interest.
Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbot was replaced by his is own party as the nation’s leader in large part because he unilaterally made England’s Prince Philip a Knight of the Order of Australia. This decision created a huge public backlash because this honor is supposed to be reserved for Australians, not foreigners.
Political revolutions, both major and minor, have usually been preceded by economic turmoil. The battle cry of the American Revolution was “no taxation without representation.” Malnutrition and hunger due to lost employment and inflation because of bad government economic policies fed the French Revolution. The Philippine economy had contracted more than 20 percent from its 1983 peak when revolution here ousted the Marcos administration.
But it is not all about the money. Dr. Jose Rizal wrote these words and they are just as relevant today, “No one ceases to be a man, no one forfeits his rights to civilization merely by being more or less uncultured, and since the Filipino is regarded as a fit citizen when he is asked to pay taxes or shed his blood to defend the fatherland, why must this fitness be denied him when the question arises of granting him some right?”
The people want free and transparent access to government information but are told that they are not capable of dealing with all the information that the office of the president must see. The people want a taxation system that is more realistic and fair. And are then asked sarcastically by one presidential aspirant as to which government programs should be cut, as if the people are not smart enough to exercise their right to have their money taxed and spent properly.
Governments that treat the rights of the people carelessly or with contempt can risk something far worse than merely losing an election.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano