Comment & Analysis

The acquiescence of the Canadian Governor General in granting the PM a suspension of parliament has highlighted the key flaw in the monarchical system: a lack of democratic legitimacy for a position of considerable political importance.

In case you missed the latest news from Canada, the Governor General, Michaelle Jean, has recently suspended parliament for a few weeks at the request of the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. What prompted this move was a threat from the opposition parties to bring down Harper’s minority government, something they could only do in the parliamentary chamber. In other words, as one blogger neatly put it: “Harper asked the referee to stop play because the other side looked certain of winning.”

It’s an extraordinary situation, and one which raises serious questions about the democratic legitimacy of the Governor General and her ‘boss’, the Queen of Canada, aka the Queen of England.

I was asked yesterday: “would it happen in a republic?” Well, possibly. It depends on the way the constitution is framed and what powers the president is granted. But that’s not really the crucial point here.

Let’s first make one thing clear. The GG was under no obligation to grant Harper’s request. She isn’t just a figurehead or a non-political representative of the Queen. She has power, albeit limited, and she has the right to make up her own mind about how to exercise that power.

In the sort of republic that we propose, the president would hold similar powers, as she does in Ireland. Usually she would grant assent to acts of parliament, only refusing on technical constitutional grounds, not on grounds of personal opposition to a law. Usually she will grant a Prime Minister’s request for an election. But, importantly, she would have the power to refuse such a request or to dissolve parliament and trigger elections against the wishes of the PM.

A number of examples can be used to illustrate this point, the Canadian situation being the latest.

• In 1975 the Australian government failed to get a crucial finance bill through the Senate. There were a number of possible solutions to the problem, and Prime Minister Whitlam was unwilling to call a general election for the lower house. In brief, the Governor General, John Kerr, dismissed Whitlam and made the opposition leader Malcolm Fraser caretaker PM, on the understanding that Fraser would call an election (which Fraser won).
• In 1974, in the UK, Prime Minister Harold Wilson called a second election that year following a very narrow victory over his conservative opponents a few months earlier. It has been made clear since that the Queen was under no obligation to grant this request for an election. The Queen had the power to tell Wilson that the people had only recently been asked to vote and that their decision should be respected, that it was up to him to find a way to make his minority government work. In the event she granted his wish and he was returned with a small majority.
• In 1990, when Margaret Thatcher was going through her prolonged removal from office at the hands of her parliamentary colleagues, there were real fears that she would out-maneuver them by calling an election. The Queen would have been within her ‘rights’ to deny such a request on the grounds that it was self-serving, and not in the interests of the country.

In each of these occasions the Head of State was free to make a personal judgement on the position of the Prime Minister, and on whether or not to allow an election. On each occasion there was potential for serious conflict between the elected PM and the un-elected Head of State. The role of the Head of State is not so much in question here, it is that they are entirely unaccountable to the electorate and entirely lacking in any legitimacy that would grant them the moral authority to act.

There is one interesting additional factor with respect to the Commonwealth countries, which is that the GG is appointed by the Queen on the advice of the PM. So not granting the PM’s wish could have career ending consequences for the Governor General (apparently Kerr was very worried that Whitlam would ask the Queen to appoint a new GG before he could dismiss Whitlam – had Whitlam been aware of Kerr’s intentions it could have come down to who got to the phone first!).

Other than that, in each of these instances, as with the Canadian situation, in a republic a president could have acted in a similar way to the Governor General or the Queen. There is however one crucial difference.

A president would act on the basis of having a democratic mandate to use her powers, as prescribed by the constitution. The president would therefore be in a stronger position to refuse a PM’s request (as I believe she should have done in Canada), but also would be accountable if she made the wrong call (as I believe he did in Australia in ‘75). Under the monarchy we have someone who has no democratic legitimacy, no authority whatsoever to make crucial decisions about national politics, and yet who is able to decide on the possible survival of governments.

It is worth quoting the Canadian Globe and Mail:

“Ms. Jean made clear to the Prime Minister that she was not a rubber stamp for his request to shut down Parliament until late January; that it was within her constitutional discretionary power to turn him down.”

To be in such a position demands democratic legitimacy and requires genuine accountability.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 12th, 2008 at 10:55 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments are now closed.