On Thursday over 1.5 million people were on the streets of France protesting President Emmanuel Macron's contested pension reforms. Why can't we demonstrate like the French? It's not as if we haven't got anything to protest about....
IN FRANCE the people are on the streets demonstrating against the decision of the Macron governments to raise the retirement age to 64. The demonstrators have been joined by the trade union movement which has launched a campaign of national strikes. In early March an estimated 1.28 million people participated in a nationwide strike. On Thursday over 1.5 million people were on the streets, according to trade union figures, in a twelfth national day of protest. From faraway New Zealand, it is a thrilling and inspiring sight to see the people standing up in resolute defence of their interests.
There is anger and frustration in this country as well. People are angry about the rising cost of living. People are angry about being screwed by the two supermarket chains while they continue to rake in what the Labour government itself has described as 'excessive profits'. People are angry about the continuing lack of access to affordable housing. People are angry about being forced to live in overcrowded conditions or in garages and their cars. People are angry about a Minister who is supposed to be tackling homelessness but spends her time promoting brands of chocolate and condemning ' white cis men' as violent monsters. People are angry about lack of ready access to health services. People are dying on hospital waiting lists and still nothing changes.
Yet none of this anger is being voiced by the trade union movement. Even the decision of the Reserve Bank to plunge the country into recession has not been enough to jolt the Council of Trade Unions (CTU) out of its slumbers. The CTU does not have to be encouraged to do nothing. But the electoral interests of Labour will ensure that this year, even as the impact of the recession begins to bite harder, it will still do nothing other than 'manage' the many redundancies that are to come.
The liberal left, for all its huffin' and puffin', has also got little to offer. For more than three decades the left has been in a toxic co-dependent relationship with the Labour Party. Labour needs the votes of middle-class liberals and middle-class liberals think they have to support Labour in order to fight a greater evil - a National government. But what the liberal left is telling us is that we must lower our expectations of Labour. It is a surrender to the status quo. At a time of economic crisis this simply isn't good enough, but so-called progressive commentators continue to scrutinise the latest poll results and speculate what it will take to keep Labour in office. As if it matters.
The ugly reductionism of such a viewpoint is that the voter is expected to accept that a Labour government or a National government is the only choice they have got. If history is any guide, then over half a million New Zealanders will reject what's on offer and simply not vote. The political establishment, of course, will wail about 'voter apathy'.
We need to take heed of the French view that democracy is built on a model in which voting is not the only means of popular expression. Given the failure of our representative democracy to actually represent the interests of ordinary people, what is required is an extra-parliamentary upheaval that not only defends the immediate economic interests of the working class but will revive a democracy that at the moment is designed to further corporate interests and little more.
This is the real reason for suppressing free speech.
ReplyDeleteThese are critical times and many are at the brink. The professional/managerial class wants to pretend that we are threatened by their own major concern - presentation.
The very real threat for the many at the edge is not being able to hold their own space. Backwards isn't to social embarrassment, it's off the cliff.