What’s with these guys? This week, Stephen Harper, the leader of the largest dominion in the 64-year-old, 53-member Commonwealth – covering a quarter of the world’s total land mass and including a third of the world’s total population – told fellow members he’d decided not to attend the upcoming meeting of the community in Sri Lanka. He said he wasn’t happy with the human rights record of the host nation’s president. So, in a desire to protect what he felt are the values of Canadians, he’s decided not to show up. It was the prime ministerial equivalent of a schoolyard child’s pout:
“Nya, nya, na-nya nya!”
Meanwhile, south of the 49th, the Congress of the largest democracy in the history of civilization has virtually shutdown because its two principal political parties seem quite prepared to take government services away from its citizens (and salaries away from federal civil servants) while arguing a philosophical point (the funding of universal Medicare in the U.S.) This week, President Obama lamented in a press conference that the greatest nation of earth shouldn’t have to get permission “from a few irresponsible members every couple of months just to keep our government open or to prevent an economic catastrophe.” But it apparently can’t get that permission to raise the debt ceiling to keep the federal government functioning. And as a consequence, average Americans are losing everything from passport processing to access to their national parks, all while the pouting politicians refuse to vote (but still get their pay cheques).
Now it’s probably fair to call the kind of record Prime Minister Harper dislikes in Sri Lanka as reprehensible. In the wake of the country’s extended civil war, what Harper cited as an “absence of accountability for serious violations of human rights,” is valid criticism; the Sri Lankan president has, for example impeached and tossed out the country’s chief justice.
However, I’m getting tired of our government leaders – particularly those closest to the destruct button – acting like children when global stability is at stake. In the case of the Canadian prime minister, it’s a bit like the pot calling the kettle black, when on one hand Harper chooses not to be seen shaking the hand of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, but feels quite comfortable embracing the likes of Vladimir Putin within weeks of the Russian president’s anti-gay declarations. However, what I find even more irksome is that Harper criticizes the dysfunction of a member Commonwealth realm while simultaneously choosing to shut down Parliament with proroguing after proroguing after proroguing.
Dysfunctional process at the upper-most levels of the so-called Western democracies appears to be the norm, these days. I mean, we’ve even witnessed the shutdown mentality at Queen’s Park with former premier Dalton McGuinty proroguing the Ontario Legislature long enough to step down, have his party elect a new leader, and then in effect postpone months of debate of the Liberal government’s closing of the Mississauga and Oakville gas-fired power plants, apparently for political expediency.
So, let’s take stock: The Ontario government appears in total disarray after a spring, summer and early autumn with no forum for public debate on key budgetary issues until this week. The Canadian government plans to boycott the upcoming Commonwealth conference on principle, while on principle it hasn’t got a quorum of MPs in Ottawa to call it a functioning Parliament. And thanks to the stalemate in Washington, the U.S. government isn’t functioning at all and next week could face defaulting on its debts, while expecting its citizens not to copy the administration’s example.
“You don’t get a chance to call your bank and say, ‘I’m not going to pay my mortgage this month,’” President Obama said Tuesday. “We can’t make extortion routine as part of our democracy.”
The problem with non-compromise among the world’s leaders is that when the big guys dig in their heels, everybody else figures it’s perfectly appropriate to follow suit. So, why can’t listening, compromising, or even agreeing to disagree (but at least staying at the negotiating table) be the model up there at the top? I mean, we all learned as kids in the playground that nobody ever gained a thing by picking up his marbles and going home.
If there is any consolation from this closing-down-the-shop mentality, at least in the U.S. example, an ABC News/Washington Post poll taken this week indicated that 51 per cent of Americans don’t like Obama’s position on the debt crisis; 61 per cent don’t like the Democrats’ position; and 70 per cent don’t like the Republicans’ position. But, interestingly, a majority of those responding to the survey had never responded to a survey before.
Perhaps intransigence at the top of the power pyramid has changed apathy to anger at the bottom.