THIRTY THOUSAND CITIZENS IN PARLIAMENT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23169, 15 October 1938, Page 1 (Supplement)

THIRTY THOUSAND CITIZENS IN PARLIAMENT

By E. M. BLAIKLOCK

AND. so the day arrives, fraught, both sides tell us, with issues of democracy. Quite evidently, citizens, the same word can mean one thing here, another there. Meanwhile be-ribboned cars coax the voters out. In Czechoslovakia they fine them if they fail to poll. In Athens, where democracy was born, the police used to sweep loiterers into the civic assembly with ropes dipped in red ochre. The rest could laugh at the red stains on the clothes of those who did not want to hear the politicians speak, but who had been caught carelessly in the street. To-day we can try an Australian station. However, there were compensations, and here wo are launched on a discussion of democracy as. once it was. The glories of the Acropolis were fresh from the mason's chisel when Athens ruled itself. An amazing people! There was no party system, no government by warring representatives; they were the Parliament, all citizens over twenty —thirty thousand of them. Meeting in an open-air theatre, where all could speak to the motion, and all vote for or against, they decided their questions of finance, peace and war. r Chosen by Lot And the citizens, too, were their own civil service. Nearly all the officers of State, as servants of the Assembly, were chosen, not by vote, but by lot, to avoid all graft and corruption. Any Athenian might find himself, in any year, an important officer of State, and inasmuch as he could not hold the saino office twice, he might in one year be looking after the roads of Attica, in another fixing market prices, while his brother was in charge of the port of the Piraeus.

To us, tho beneficiaries or the victims, as it strikes us, of battalions of permanent officials who leave us only with bald heads and a pension, the Athenian system seems fantastic. Of course, Attica was no bigger than l J nra * naki, and Athens was somewhat below Auckland in population, bond and free, and much more but could we run democracy like this? Imagine it. A fair-sized crowd in tho Domain cricket ground is our governing body, and you or I or the man next door can don the laurel wreath conveying privilege and speak. And you might be Mayor, and I town clerk, and he the city engineer. We could hardly avoid a turn on the' Cabinet. This, in Athens, was the Council, the. executive pivot of the Assembly. Five hundred strong, it Bat in sections continuously, lmmensefy powerful such a body might have become, had not its members been selected by lot, for one year ' only, and thereafter been prohibited from sitting on the Council again. "By the People" Since nobody under thirty years of age was eligible, a simple calculation, taking into account approximate population and expectation of life, will prove that there were very- few Athenians who had not at some time or other served on the Council' This was government by the people with a vengeance. Better still. The citizens were, for convenience, divided into ten tribes. The tribes were scattered, not grouped territorially. This was to avoid the emergence of parochialism. Gifts of local post offices and parish pumps would have cut no politioal ice in ancient Athens. Fifty from each tribe formed the Council, ahd each, tribe's representatives took one-

Democracy As Ancient Atkens Knew It

tenth of the year for continuous service. During their month, they were kept together like a modern grand jury, fed and housed by the State.

Every twenty-four hours, their chairman, the President, was elected by lot. He, who obviously might be you or 1, was for his day and night the embodiment of the State. He would receive foreign- envoys, and preside, if there was an Assembly. Imagine the high general standard of ability which this presupposes. Greek satire pokes fun enough at human foibles, but nowhere do we read of a man who through nervousness or simple incapacity proved unequal to the task, thrust suddenly upon him, of being Premier, for one day. Arithmetic again will tell us that three out of every ten Athenians must have held the office at some time. Loud-voiced Agitator This daring use of the lot was abandoned in two cases, it was too risky a method for the appointment of the ten generals, who formod the War Office and Admiralty. These were elected annually by a show of hands. This, too, could lead to strange results. An Athenian force once had some Spartans bottled up on an island, but somehow could not capture them. A loud-voiced agitator named Cleon criticised the generals in a ranting speech, and said what he would do. One of the generals resigned. A quick proposal, and a quicker voto, and Cleon was general in charge of the campaign before ho could climb down. The. fun of it was that he brazened it out, and brought the Spartans back alive. But imagine the Auckland Assembly yonder in the Domain. An irate citizen

discourses on the administration of Samoa, and finds himself off by the next boat, appointed Commissioner by a snap vote, to go and do better! The generals, incidentally, could be reelected. to allow experience to be used. And- the Conservator of Wells was elected by vote for four years. The Athenians were too sensible to risk a water famine by their devotion to the lot. And if you or I or the man next door became a nuisance, if Ave had the big voice so dangerous in democracies, and a trick of starting movements, we could be "ostracised." Half-way through each year there was a special meeting The magistrate asked if there was anyone who should be "ostracised." An affirmative from a quorum of six thousand led to another vote. A Long Holiday The Greek word for a broken piece of pottery is "ostrakon," and on pieces of pottery the citizens wrote the unpopular name. If a majority of the six thousand concurred on one name, that man left Athens for ten years. Thus minority movements were nipped in the bud. A Hitler or a Major Douglas would go on a long holiday before his party gathered strength. Hurrah for ostracism! Such then was democracy as an ancient city knew it. As all good things do, it decayed in course of time, and had already lost its rich free spirit when Dictator Philip of barbarous Macedon came south with the mailed fist ; and left an enslaved Greece from which his groat son, Alexander, could march east to fame and empire. But what a State was Athens in her hey-day! One of her most quoted statesmen is Pericles. His words adorn cenotaphs and memorials the world over. "Athens aloue," boasted he in a famous oration, "when put to the test excels her reputation. Greece looks to ns to learn." As we plv the blue pencil for democracy to-day. shall wo ask ourselves whether we cf Auckland could have managed the State ot Athens?