– Lynda – 21/8/97
We all complain about politicians’ dishonesty and greed, and we’ve brought about some changes – the change to MMP for starters. But I wonder if a little “civil disobedience” mightn’t get them listening more carefully.
Civil disobedience isn’t violence, it doen’t involve damaging property or endangering people in any way. But it can send a powerful message.
As I see it, we the people have a contract with our elected representatives: we pay our taxes in exchange for their honest efforts to implement our wishes. If they continually disregard people’s needs, then as I see it, they have broken their part of the contract.
Must we then uphold ours? Why fill in the yearly tax-return for instance? Yes, yes, we all know it’s a ‘punishable offence’ to neglect to fill in a tax-return, but punishable by what? A fine? Imprisonment? If it was a publicly declared gesture of ‘passive resistance’, on the part of a group of people, with specific objectives clearly stated, I don’t think it’d take long for more people to support them and for the government to get nervous. After all, they need that money, and they need our support, which is what they’re getting by default, as long as we carry on doing nothing.
Another act of daring ‘disobedience’ would be for people up and down the country at voting-time to ‘deface’ their voting forms. Since ‘informal’ votes (with all options crosses out, indicating no confidence in any of the blighters) have been deemed invalid by our illustrious leaders – let’s instead write ‘Government Sux’ or some other prearranged slogan on the forms. Are ‘they’ going to arrest/fine/decapitate so many? At worst, the votes might be declared invalid. At best, if enough people did it, it might cause the election to be repeated, with better candidates. A waste of tax-payers money? WE are the tax-payers, and I for one would rather ‘waste’ my money on that, than on silk underpants for Tuku Morgan.
