Tuesday, November 04, 2008

By The People For The People?

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Maybe not my business as its San fulgencia, but had to make a general comment on recent events there. Not about corruption, let me make that clear, no comment on rights or wrongs, who done it and who didn’t. I prefer to leave that to the courts. However something did seem worthy of a posting, see what you think out there.
You will all no doubt have seen the story of British councillors take the reins, if only for a day. Even the good old BBC took a moments rest from the Brand/Ross story to take a look. The details seem a little fuzzy with at least one British guy saying that he had not been Mayor for a day. The one point that does seem to be clear is the fact that these two representatives of the people who do not speak much Spanish at all. Now I would have thought to be effective as a politician in any country you would need a very good command of the language. I know I would never give my vote to someone who in reality would not know what the heck was going on. May be that’s why one of them was made councillor for animals, do dogs bark in Spanish?
No joking a side, it maybe very noble and not a little brave to stand for election to represent your community, isn’t it just a little short sighted to do so if you cannot understand what is going on in the meeting you will attend.

What surprises me is that there is not some sort of ruling about competency in the official language of the country in which you are standing. Surely that would make sense.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Isn't the idea that representatives are elected by the people rather than by "the powers that be"? Wasn't that rather the point, for instance, when Bobby Sands was elected as an MP all those years ago? Should there have been a rule that said he shouldn't stand either?

I think lots of politicians should be disbarred because they are reactionary ne'er do wells but then maybe not everyone would agree with me.

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