Protest movement born of the internet is making history in Canada.
http://noprorogue.whyweprotest.net is hot off the presses, and it looks like it has a lot of potential. In case you haven't heard, Canada had it's very first internet spawned protests happen last Saturday January 23rd. It all started on a facebook group called “Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament”, now over 200 000 strong. Within a few weeks of its creation, Canadians had a national day of action with over 60 communities participating and an estimated 27 000 protesters.
This all started over what's being called an 'unprecedented abuse of power', when Prime Minister Stephen Harper prorogued, or essentially just shut the doors of Parliament. He pulled this move without notice on December 30th, 2009.... while the elected representatives of Canada were home on holiday break.
Harper's Conservatives don't have a majority of seats in the house, so they need the votes of an opposition party to pass any laws... and technically, could be knocked out of power with any passed no confidence motion. Harper prorogued parliament barely a year before to avoid such a vote, which he was poised to lose. In this case, he's trying to shut down a parliamentary committee investigation into a potential grave breach of the Geneva convention. Yeah, that's right, he shut it down to avoid talk about complicity in a serious war crime.
http://noprorogue.whyweprotest.net has been created to help all those opposed to this abuse of power to find and spread information about what looks like the beginnings of some very rough times for Canadian democracy.
Can you imagine if an American President had the power to shut down Washington whenever he wanted?
No comments:
Post a Comment