Having
long been happy with the trend to recognise the Treaty of Waitangi as
the foundation of our country, I've more recently become aware that
it is inducing people to see sovereignty as an institution. I
believe sovereignty ought to be vested in the people as a whole.
Instead, the traditional practice of nations has been to vest it in
the state - the historical rationale being that the state replaced
the monarch, and the monarch was the origin of sovereign power.
What's
wrong with this? The political left and right have an extensive
track record of using state power to limit our attainment of human
rights and freedom of expression. Not to mention mass exploitation
via taxation without representation. We send them to parliament so
they can get rich at taxpayers' expense and pretend to govern in our
collective best interests. The collusion between left and right in
the ancient control system works via the matrix, which provides a
sufficient illusion of democracy to sustain public consent.
Exaltation
of the Treaty in recent decades served to restore Maori tribal
interests. However it seems to me that the Maori have a
co-dependency relation with the British Crown which is not in the
best interests of our people as a whole. Our multicultural future
may be incompatible with our bicultural past if we adhere to the
historic constitutional framework. Instead, we ought to consider the
need to reframe sovereignty as a fundamental principle of democracy.
We ought to reconstitute Aotearoa by vesting our sovereignty in all
of our citizens as a collective whole.
I
suggest therefore that we create a genuine progressive political
movement in favour of constitutional reform as a national priority.
This need not mean creating a republic; observation of the political
evolution of the United States of America since the Eisenhower
presidency informs us that it is such a flawed role model for
republics as to make them seem little better than monarchies.
Several years ago Prince Charles published his book “Harmony: a
new way of looking at our world” and it reveals his extensive and
authoritative track record as an avatar of the global green movement.
Charles has therein proven himself both authentic and enterprising,
the role model the world needs, and an entirely suitable exemplar and
head of state for the British Commonwealth. I've had to rethink my
long-standing dismissal of the royal family as irrelevant.
There's
a middle way between republicanism and retention of the British Crown
as our head of state. A prudent compromise would be to make the
latter conditional upon general public satisfaction with the
performance of any royal head of state. I suggest the constitutional
clause to effect this should specify a plebiscite threshold of 2/3 of
kiwi voters required to replace the hereditary royal system with a
popular mandate for a kiwi head of state. The innovative change then
results from a substantial majority deciding that the old system no
longer serves the public.
Dennis
Frank, 13/2/15
