RE: Little bit of direct democracy triumphed in British Columbia, but not in the crandle of DEMOCRACY GREECE !
Congratulations from Greece, where we try to have these
opportunities of people-initiated referendum in the middle of a horrible
crisis, but the governing oligarchies with IMF do not allow us to do so.
So we decided to launch today 11/11/11 a Citizens Parliament called
DIMOVOULIO.
Best regards
George L. Kokkas
N.G.O Forum for Citizens' Democracy
Ippokratous str. 42 - GR-10680 Athens
Greece
Tel.: +30 2103648300 - Fax: +30 2103610882
e-mail : geoko(at)otenet.gr
web: www.dimopolis.gr
www.3ddemocracy.eu
-----Original Message-----
From: M. Kolar [wddm(at)mkolar.org]
Sent: Friday, November 11, 2011 3:22 AM
To: wddm@world-wide-democracy.net
Subject: Fwd: Little bit of direct democracy triumphed in British Columbia
This did not get through the first time:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Little bit of direct democracy triumphed in British Columbia
Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2011 09:59:04 -0700
From: M. Kolar <wddm(at)mkolar.org>
To: wddm@world-wide-democracy.net
We had a landmark referendum in the province of British Columbia, Canada on
a
change of the tax system.
(I will not go into much detail, you can find them on the Internet if
interested. In short, B.C. government introduced the so called Harmonized
Sales
Tax, that replaced the old federal General Sales Tax and Provincial Sales
Tax.
This change amounted to shifting part of the tax from corporations to
consumers.)
People did not like the way how the change was introduced - it was announced
shortly after the last provincial elections after the wining Liberal Party
was
promising there will be no tax change.
Although B.C. has (as the only province of Canada) an Initiative and
Referendum
and Recall Act, it sets very high threshold on the number of signatures
needed
to hold a people-initiated referendum. In spite of these obstacles, when
people
got really angry, they managed to overcome them. The initiative to collect
signatures to hold this referendum started two years ago, the referendum was
mail-in, the deadline to submit the ballots was August 5, and the referendum
results were announced yesterday. People won, 54% voted in favour of
rejecting
HST and returning to the old GST/PST. B.C. government promised to implement
the
decision of the referendum.
It is the first time in the British Commonwealth that people had a direct
say
in how they are taxed!
In the many commentaries about the results of this referendum, on could hear
also fear of direct democracy, and the comments that the Initiative Act is
apparently not restrictive enough, and the government may want to make it
even
harder for a people's initiative to be successful and that it may want to
repel
the Initiative Act altogether!