The US System

Nick E. Quidwai, Executive Director, Concerned Citizens, Thousand Oaks, CA

Despite all the apparent faults of our democratic system, it is nonetheless the most open system known to man. I downloaded the 43-page decision of the Florida Supreme Court in favor of VP Al Gore and would like to read from page 9: “The right to vote is the right to participate; it is also the right to speak, but most importantly the right to be heard.” (underlined in the 43 page ruling).

I had the opportunity to talk about this with the Presidential candidate Mr. Ralph Nader when he visited my city of Thousand Oaks. The City Council  has taken away our right to seek redress at the lowest local  level. We cannot speak to the all-important consent calendar where the tax and waste reports are hidden from public view and if there is  a large crowd that wants to speak about an important issue then there is an iron GRID that dilutes speaker’s time from five minutes to two minutes. Try making a cogent argument after reading EIRs, traffic reports which can easily be of 500 pages! To top it all, our School Board has started to meet on the same night so that you cannot be at both agencies should an important issue concerning your children or taxes be on the agenda the same night. Also, when you speak before these agencies they never respond to your just queries. There have also been instances when the Mayor prohibited council  members from asking questions of citizen speakers!

As an immigrant from Pakistan I found it so ironic and hypocritical. And today the Senate imposed  sanctions on Pakistan for getting missiles from China, but it let China off the hook due to obvious economic self-interests. This was done on the same day when Israel used missiles against innocent civilians in Gaza city.