1. The constitution must establish the limits of power, to protect the common interest and the greater good
  2. Our constitution has been written by people who were elected and by people who were in power
  3. There is a conflict of interest: the one who is in power must never determine the limits of his own power
  4. Every person which will come into an office of power must not participate in the writting process of the constitution
  5. The constitution must therefore be written by the people and then voted in by the people.

People in power should not write the limits of their own power

Since the dawn of time, it has been the people in power, or the people who were candidate to power, that have been writting the rules controlling power mechanisms.

This is a major design fault that makes it impossible to have honesty in the founding text of a State.

Professional politiciens, that they be currently in an office of power or only candidate to power, are jugde and jury in the constitutional process, which naturally leads them to cheating and putting in place fake control mechanisms or to refuse to give citizen the most important means to resist, for example, between two election periods.

  • As an example, they will find all possible downsides to a referendum proposed by popular initiative so that they can place their power far enough from the direct control of citizens, instead of defending the common interest.
  • Other important examples: they will make sure that neither the counting nor the effect of blank votes that would let voters the chance to refuse all candidates that have been presented, and even worse, they won’t even consider binding mandates which would authorise the control of our elected representatives to check if they have kept their electoral promises.
  • They will authorise multiple holding of mandates and their indefinite renewal, even though we know that power corrupts people and that it must be placed into different hands often, as if it were a necessary democratic hygiene.
  • Etc.

Never will people in power write the rules that we need, it is easy to understand and to expect. No: it’s is our role, simply, to keep them as far from this dangerous phase (of writing the constitution) before putting our fate into their hands.

For the people to be able to write a constitution, it will have to entrust this task to a Constitutional Assembly. To designate the members of this assembly, we must not use the electoral process which is anti-democratic (see the previous chapter), but by the random draw / sortition. It is by using this paramount step that the fight against all abuse of power will succeed and that is why all is said in this message:

Because it is not right for the people in power to write the limits of their own power

We want a democratic Constitutional Assembly, therefore randomnly drawn.

To be able to randomly draw this Constitutional Assembly we can imagine different techniques. In the next chapter will be found a proposition for this process which could, under a year, lead to the writing of a constition that would protect the greater good and common interest.


Next Chapter: Writing a better constitution

Videos

  1. Etienne Chouard – Meeting

    On the constitution.

Documents

Liens

 

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