I live in a village of 230 souls. Over the last two decades, almost everything that brought life to it has disappeared: cash register, postal counter, convenience store, canteen, popular festivals… Even the church — one of the most beautiful in the area — was demolished, so that a citizen group was ready to acquire it. In short, what was a charming village is now nothing more than a lost hamlet.
Several heritage houses have been disfigured or demolished with the approval of the authorities and against the Implementation and Architectural Integration Plan (PIIA) voted by these same authorities. In exchange, public benches (empty) and picnic tables (unused) have sprung up all over the area where one of the councilors owns a sawmill. Yes, in small municipalities, everyone’s interests are sometimes visible to the naked eye.
These observations, combined with what I observe in the surrounding villages, lead me to question democracy in rural areas.
First and foremost, the composition of the municipal council. In large cities, seats are numbered by district. In municipalities with less than 20,000 inhabitants, there is usually no division by district, but the six seats are nevertheless numbered without their number referring to anything other than the desk in the council room.
In our villages, it is not always easy to find six volunteers; many elected officials are therefore elected by default. And if more than six people present themselves, those “surplus” must necessarily present themselves “against” someone else, since each candidate must specify the seat sought. And this, even if all the seats are equal, I remind you. If the political situation means that you want to run against a specific person, nothing could be more normal, it’s “fair game”. But if you just want to get involved in political life without being “against” anyone, you still have to apply against someone, the system being set up like this. If so, there are two possibilities.
Simply decide not to run — and deprive the community of the minimum democratic exercise that constitutes the choice of its leaders once every four years.
Choosing a seat more or less at random – at the risk of being accused of “causing elections” (that’s expensive!) and of running against someone who is nice and “never nothing done ” !
Next, let’s look at how the board works. More and more, it is customary for him to work in caucus, therefore behind closed doors, to make all decisions. Public meetings only serve to ratify them. So, we respect the letters of the law, but I am not sure that we respect its spirit. As a citizen, I no longer have any access to discussions, reflections, exchanges of arguments between those whom I have nevertheless elected.
At public meetings, the council presents itself as a single bloc, with all decisions taken unanimously. Is this what I voted for? I do not believe.
Of course, the law still requires the council to hold a question period. But being kept away from the process which led to all the decisions, the population can only react a posteriori. So, when the elected officials have reached an agreement behind closed doors – perhaps after long and bitter discussions – and you come to the council and dare to ask questions, you are necessarily a little “tiring”, a little “tiring”. »…
Furthermore, since everyone knows each other more or less, positions easily take on a personal connotation. Thus, we can see local organizations penalized by the authorities or even victims of blackmail because of political opinions expressed by one of their volunteers; we can see elected officials “canceling” dissident fellow citizens — for example by ceasing to greet them in the village square or by deliberately refusing their candidacy for committees.
Let’s be clear: most elected officials work hard and put their heart into it. The government delegates more and more powers to them — therefore, more and more responsibilities. Obviously, there are many files for which they cannot have the knowledge necessary to make informed decisions nor the time to acquire it. The context forces them to cut corners to meet deadlines.
My village of 230 souls has an annual budget of around a million dollars and a council of seven elected officials including the mayor (3% of the population) who, with several employees, roughly manages what is commonly called a ” four corners “. The surrounding villages are slightly more populous, but I doubt they are large enough to justify all the resources put into administering them.
I believe it is time to sit down at the drawing board for municipal democracy in rural areas, particularly to:
1. Abolish the numbering of seats and present the ballot papers in the form of a list of candidates of which the six having obtained the most votes will be declared elected.
2. Reserve the caucus for the transfer of information and for subjects that must be dealt with behind closed doors to allow the population to have access to the debates so essential to democratic life.
3. Offer ethics training taking into account the particularities of small environments. To remind elected officials of the importance of voting according to their convictions for which the population has placed their trust in them rather than seeking unanimity at all costs (on the surface?) and to equip them to be able to clearly differentiate between the opinions of people, the political debate of the personal conflict.
4. Explore innovative ways to bring together municipal councils and pool resources from adjacent villages to increase their efficiency and professionalism. Without turning to pure and simple mergers where, usually, the biggest simply swallows up the smallest, can we think of original solutions, adapted to each environment?
This is an invitation that I am extending!