In most instances, grassroots political organizing can be a good thing. Governments, by design, are selected by the people and are therefore beholden to the people's wishes.
Ideally, politicians or political parties make promises to get elected and then once elected, work to enact those promises. But it’s not realistic to expect that governments stay beholden to the public’s every single wish or demand. They can do their best, but there are going to be times when the unpopular thing is done because, well, it had to be done.
Voters choose the course of government action once every few years, with the amount of intervening time changing from place to place. Elections are really the only time the public gets to decide what happens in government, everything outside of election day is really out of our control.
But should that be the case? Should there ever be a time when the government in a free and liberal democracy is not beholden to the people?
Honestly, there probably is. Elected officials are chosen so we the people don’t have to concern ourselves with tax reform or land-use bylaws or zoning regulations. It sounds odd, but elected officials need to be allowed to do that stuff because there is no realistic way for the general public to be kept informed enough to make rational decisions on every single thing that governments do.
In Calgary, there has been a new effort to recall the mayor, a process that has a set threshold so impossibly high it will never actually happen. Displeasure and frustration with elected officials is totally understandable, but there is a reason recalling politicians is so rare.
It doesn’t fix anything. Elected officials that commit crimes should be removed from office because they’ve broken the public trust and the law. But trying to remove a politician you don’t like just because you don’t like them is very much a “take-my-ball-and-go-home” attitude.
The people trying to organize Mayor Gondek’s recall can try and make valid points about her leadership, and if they get close to completing the recall effort I think it says a lot about their ability to organize. But then I wonder, where was that organization during the election?
It’s great to think you can just fire politicians you don’t like, after all they work for the people. But then of course, what do you do next?
