Govern-Meant/Elek-shun poem by Dyfed Lloyd Evans
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Govern-Meant
In guise they call democracy
The rule of mediocrity
Suppressing meritocracy.
Elek-shun ’05
Not that the country cares,
Most seats are simply safe
And scarce a million votes;
Those ‘swingers’ in their marginals
Cam make a government —
To lose or win
First-past-the-post —
A system for the status quo
Designed to shrink our votes to nought
Make mockery of democracy
Pink or chronic washed-out blue —
A choice that isn‘t up to you
They who feign to lead —
Who wish to rule
Should not be taken to our hearts
Lest quests for power,
Their tread on Whitehall carpet,
Corrupt them by its static pull
Make them believe,
With each successive term
The mythos of their victory
Infallibility
In choosing policy
Dictat of those commons folk
For whom we did not vote
Whose mandate is not ours
So out of touch
With un-enfranchiséd we
In mediaeval media age
Their hustings but a microphone
Each spouts not policies but spin
The substance of appearance
Orat‘ry to sound-bite shrunk
These candidates
Their togas stained by party lines
We glimpse the men, and women too
No longer darkening our door
Who spout the party rhetoric
Seek now to sell themselves
And yet we vote the party in
Promises and lies
Are simply policy
Those few with principles
Ossified and thus reduced
To back-bench ob-so-scurity
Lost from media glare
That in its sightless gaze
Mutates a servant-of-the-folk
To star
So waste that ink
And spoil your ballot sheet
Or cast your vote unto the void
Of pointlessness
When all, this time, is done
Ask not for whom we cast our vote
The government just won...
These are two poems written at very different times, almost a decade apart (Govern-meant in 1996 and Elek-shun in 2005), yet both refer to the same theme. I was thinking of the internet and its potential for a true democracy (on the Athenian and Swiss models) and comapring that to the political systems we now have. Where power-hungry individuals seek power and seek to impose their will upon us. The second poem is proffered as a response to the electioneering of the 2005 UK parliamentary campaign. The truth is, that we haven't really moved that far from the Roman senatorial system where those with money and ower seek to get themselves elected to the senate (or parliament) and then attempt to keep the populace dosile and controlled with 'bread and cricuses'. If this is true democracy then I'm an Aldebaran Scrunk.
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