Should public statements by sitting politicians and officials be under oath?

hatrickpatrick

Laugh if you like, this is a very serious proposal on my part.

Part of the reason politics is so screwed up is that there is NO accountability. Those who support a "the big boys know best" system will tell you that we do have accountability in general elections, but how is this even close to good enough? If politicians lie to us, we have an opportunity every FIVE YEARS to pick someone else, and the poll generally includes no one who is actually honest?

Wikileaks has proved this more than anything. The amount of private political promises which were the opposite of what the public were promised revealed in the cables is INCREDIBLE. An example I have cited on other sites is Yemen. The government explicitly promised the people that they would never allow US airstrikes in the country and that any such strikes were done by the Yemeni military, not the US. The cables, on the other hand, bluntly say to the US "Yeah, we'll let you do it, and we'll cover your ass in parliament if it comes up".

Now this isn't an argument about US foreign policy. Whether you approve of such airstrikes or not is not the issue. The issue is that if the people don't know this is a policy, how can they possibly know who to vote against at election time? If a majority of the people oppose such airstrikes, how can they vote against it if they don'y even know it's happening at all, let alone which parties are sanctioning it?

This is one example out of thousands.

So my very radical proposals to deal with it are as follows:
1: All statements by officials and politicians should be made under oath. Being mislead is an obvious exception - if a politician genuinely believed their falsehood it's not their fault of course. but if it can be proved that a politician or official blatantly and willfully LIED to the public, he or she should IMO be automatically ejected from office. If the people decide the lie was insignificant, they can always choose to vote that politician back in. I would even go so far in major cases to suggest that it should be criminal perjury.

2: No private government meetings. The minutes of cabinet should be published, as should the minutes of every POLICY meeting the government has. (Note: Not every meeting. But every meeting where official policy is decided).
Once again, because the people cannot possibly control their government if they don't even know what said government is doing in their name.

3: A referendum of confidence in the government should be possible. I'm not sure how this would work, you would have to get the agreement of a substantial number of people (say, 100,000 signatures just as a vague example, would probably be higher) but once this has been achieved and verified, there will be a vote of confidence in the government at a national referendum level, and if the majority vote is no, the government has say 2 months to get their affairs in order before the general election is held.


Does anyone agree with either of those two points? Real democracy? No more false promises, no more political lies, no more secret policies, and a government which is genuinely and 100% subject to the people at all times?

Liam Byrne

It's an idea, but if you listen to most politicians there's enough political waffle and double-speak in there to cover every angle.

I'd be more interested in an analysis of whether they made any definitive or authoratitive answer and if not then view them as incompetent.

In fact, the only genuine WTF? moment I can remember in the last while where a politician hung themselves out to dry was Ahern's admission of nepotism re his friends and his contradictions re being warned.

Most of the time politicians talk for hours but if you dissect the caveats they've said nothing whatsoever.

hatrickpatrick

^ Well what about when our government told us that there was absolutely no question of an IMF intervention, literally one week before Chopper & co arrived in Dublin?