04 October, 2009

2. Why the Lisbon Treaty is an open invitation to corruption

The proposed treaty will make it impossible for Parliament to sack the Commission for overt corruption, even of the type that stinks in the public's noses. Here's how the degradation of Europe's democracy was instigated. Either by malice, lust for power or ignorance, political party machines are trying to block or subvert the checks and balances initiated by the founding fathers like Robert Schuman.

Over the last two centuries the European States were faced with major problems. Not only war - that was the common virus of the Continent. A violent outbreak of war was expected at regular intervals. The main problem was the ever-increasing deaths in these endemic wars. Increased wartime mortality, caused by the industrialization of war, took on aspects of a generalized European suicide, said Schuman. In reality there are just two ways to deal with Europe. Let us call them Plan ‘A’ and Plan ‘Z’.

Plan A was seen as the usual solution to a war. Actually Plan A caused war as much as it solved it. One country conquered another to seize property or booty, or put an end to oppression. But then with time the second country rose up and freed themselves and conquered the first. In fact all the plans from A to Y caused war. They were really only variations of Plan A. Solutions A to Y all involved one nation, or one industrialized group, or one cartel, one political, military, economic, philosophical, religious or racial ideology, dominating all the other groups of Europe. Historians say that for Europeans war was business as usual for two thousand years. Within Western Europe every generation was either recovering from war, preparing war or actually conducting war. see www.schuman.info/jubilee.htm

After World War 2, nations were still faced with the same choice, (when X= atheistic Marxism and Y= racist and neo-pagan Nazism plus the persistent W= lucrelatrous Cartels).

In 1950, the European Community’s founding fathers created an entirely new idea, called Plan Z. This was the final solution. Not for death but for living together in peace. It is also called a supranational democracy. By banning domination by a clique, it encourages prosperity while eliminating the seemingly inevitable descent into war every generation. Europeans chose LIFE. They chose peace.

Supranational democracy made war materially impossible. It made war unthinkable. There have been NO wars in Western Europe inside the Community in more than sixty years. No other period in all European history has had such a long peace.

At the turn of this new century, along comes another generation of politicians. They are a privileged third generation. The only third generation of Europeans who have not known a European war inside the borders of what was the original Community. They chose to reform the founding treaties. Fine. But how do they choose to reform it? Cocooned by peace and prosperity, they said that Plan Z is outdated. Forgetful of who caused the damage to the Community idea and why, or just willfully ignorant of the original concept of democracy, they say their idea of a political oligarchy is more efficient and more modern. It would certainly benefit them. They ignore the people who warn: ‘This continuing loss our rights and our freedom of expression will end in our subjugation and then disaster for you. You politicians do not respect our rights in the treaties. This proposal for treaty 'reform' is really Plan A, writ large. This time it inserts a pernicious political clique inside plan Z. Your plan A introduces the same poisonous virus, asserting control by one powerful group over the weak and apparently powerless. That virus is written in deep letters in the heart of the proposed Constitutional Treaty and the ‘Reform Treaty’ now called the Lisbon Treaty.’ In short, they say, the poisonous virus enters the Community system lethally by making the European Commission a party-political oligarchy. The other institutions of civil society are chloroformed.

This menace has been growing in the years since the departure of the founding fathers. De Gaulle attempted a nationalistic fight-back 'to suffocate and chloroform' the institutions. He wished to be in control of Europe with the Commission as his secretariat. He therefore subverted the Community system for his own egotistical and nationalistic purposes. Other politicians followed suit by playing nationalistic cards. They did not succeed. Whether democrats or not however, they did not stop filling the Commission vacancies illegitimately with national politicians only.

Arrogant politicians are cuckoos who have lulled the public to sleep. They coo: 'The virus is harmless. Why not make the Commission political? Why should it be independent? All European governments have political parties, don’t they? All Commission members must be national representatives, and of course politicians'.

Democrats, WAKE UP! The politicians are attacking every autonomous aspect of the Community system with its five independent institutions for all Civil Society; www.schuman.info/supra5.htm They are turning Europe into a rubber stamp without checks or balances. The ‘reform’ fuses the competence of two independent bodies, the Commission and Parliament. It puts both under party control. It makes the secretive Council of Ministers complicit in this underhand political nepotism. The treaties say the Council should have a higher, nobler responsibility for States, not parties.

A democratic system must protect the rights of the individual against the abuse of governments. What does the ‘reforming’ treaty do? It puts the foxes (the politicians) in charge of the chicken coop and right inside the coop too! They want the key to lock anyone out who would stop this oligarchy! That means ALL non-political people and associations. Referendum results are ignored or banned wherever possible.

The foxes want to exclude the public from becoming candidates for the President of the Commission. Unlike the USA, children will be told they should not consider becoming President if they wish to remain honest, impartial and non-ideological. Only a person selected and supported by political parties will legally be allowed, the foxes declare arrogantly. Now and for ever more. Naturally, this person must also support them, the political foxes. Only two or three people have any chance of becoming the new Commission President, one each selected exclusively by the big party machines. Who makes the final selection? The Council of Ministers, themselves all party politicians. The European Parliament run by the main parties must then confirm this person by electing the Council's choice by a majority vote. What a stitch-up!

Each party has already gone to the polls supporting 'their' political candidate for Commission President. Each party has also denounced the other parties’ candidates as incompetent. The Council designates who has won this hypocritical media theatre of vitriol and infantile name-calling. He or she will be the one who has gained the most votes in the parliamentary election. This person is then nominated for an entirely different institution, the Commission. The previous treaties say exactly the opposite: the Commission should be independent of ALL interest groups, including and we might say especially, the political parties.

The electoral result will also not be fair. As we have seen in the first Commission Debate, the election results are willfully distorted by national governments. They refuse a single electoral law specified in the treaties.

To succeed in being elected in Parliament, the would-be Commission president must flatter the majority MEPs, his pals, and their ideology. Thus, each new Commission presidency will boast and vaunt distinct political biases and a preferred ideology. An ideology is, for any who need reminding, a sophisticated mixture of truth, error and ignorance.

Why do politicians want to change the extraordinarily successful supranational model of democracy, by creating an undemocratic oligarchy and destroying the Community's balanced, if chloroformed, democratic framework? They figure that a treaty written by politicians brings a sort of legitimacy if passed by the politicians’ parliaments in all States. That will trump referendums and popular disapproval. With ratification they will say they have the law on their side for a potential power and money grab, unprecedented in Community history.

The Commission has powers to redistribute the budget. In a fully functioning European Community an independent Parliament and the other independent bodies like the Consultative Committees must control the budget. The latter institutions, that the treaties say represent organized Civil Society, are already chloroformed. Members, now mostly politicians not NGOs, are hand picked to keep quiet. And in this politicians’ ‘reform’ the Parliament is no longer a controller but becomes an accomplice. Corruption? No problem! The Commission has Parliament in its pocket. The MEPs will also expect something for their open pockets and purses!

The second danger relates to turning over the reins of power to vote-gathering machines. Under the ‘reform’ system, parliamentary elections would try to vacuum up every vote, including the most extremist ones. Once a Commission is politicized, it would try to seduce the voters of either one section of the population or the other, searching for the marginal voters to make up a majority of MEPs. For example, some parties would naturally turn left to labour, others to capitalists, others to the middle ground. But that is not all. Some covertly turn to cartelists, financiers or a religion such as atheism, secularism or fanaticism, those who threaten violence. With the smell of corrupt money in the air, Europe will suffer the worst excesses of right-wing or left-wing politics, and covert politics, while trying to seduce with money the fanaticism of extreme, and sometimes highly dangerous, groupings. In our society, all should have a voice, but none should threaten violence.

If voter-gathering machines make the theatre by fair means or foul to elect MEPs for a majority, the real object is to capture the Commission Presidency. Only one person can occupy this chair. For democracy, the most important question relates to the earliest stage of candidate selection. The ‘reform’ is silent on this, of course. Who selects the candidates for Commission President from the millions of potential candidates among the public? The main political parties! Who will they chose? One of their own. That is one of the 2 per cent of Europeans who carry their party membership card. Some 98 per cent of citizens will be eliminated.

Don’t hope if you buy a card, you will have a chance to become President! The party secretariats will help chose the preferred candidate amongst a small clique of ‘suitable’ names. A bare handful of people are the real candidates. The ‘Reformers' want to limit European free choice for democracy - of half a billion citizens - to the smallest possible number, those of the party chiefs. The people’s democratic duty will be reduced to voting Yes to one of two or three faces.

This represents the most blatant discrimination ever attempted in any democratic state. And with powerful political incentives. Top political oligarchs in a political cartel can choose their Joe President to influence the entire European economy and proposals for European funding for their own cause.

What a prize! Parliament will NEVER sack the President, even for gross corruption, www.schuman.info/LTEP.htm . The treaties give Parliament the job of dismissing the Commission for misconduct. The Commission President’s political pals, the foxes, are the only ones who could sack him. Dismissal requires an open vote with two-thirds majority! No chance of that! The majority are his most stalwart supporters. Any brave soul who broke ranks would be roundly abused for disloyalty. The Commission’s built-in parliamentary majority and the party machine would pressurize the honest MEPs who contemplated becoming turncoats! In the elections, the majority of MEPs and their party allies have chosen, nurtured and influenced the corrupt President in all his policies! The party secretariat picked him. They all not only committed their vote to him but also got the Europeans to vote to create the Parliament's majority that put this political fox in office. This is Europe's best person, they said, to be the referee and arbiter of European politics.

Thus the proposed Lisbon Treaty fails in the essential task of any true democracy: the ability to throw the rascals out! A politicized Commission President will be absolutely free to fund party political foundations and activities from taxpayers' money. No questions asked. Money calms other critics. And extra funding for the main parties will eliminate any difficult grouping (especially those for the poor and oppressed) that opposes them.

This invitation to corruption is not just a local matter affecting only Europe’s half billion people. The dangers of this fatally flawed ‘reform’ are of worldwide importance as we will discuss in the next debate.

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