The 157 Votes Quasi Mayor of Saltspring Island - Alcyonenews

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Posted March 23, 2018

The 157 Votes Quasi Mayor of Saltspring Island

About seven months ago, we had a referendum in SSI. It culminated a six year ordeal we had been subjected to by our three Elected Officials, as they call themselves, to remind us that whatever they do it is out fault, because we elected them.

Over these half dozen years, they had unleashed upon us C & Cs, Committees and Consultants, to inform that unbeknownst to us, we would love another layer of government on our shoulders, as if we are not already overburdened with bureaucrats.

Prominent among the nonsense the 3EO’s bought with our money to implant into our crania was the occasional self-evident truth, Propoganda people use such to bestow credibility on whatever they push on the “targeted” people. In this instance it was democracy, they said. Democracy is people governing themselves; Local governance must be done by “locals”; presto, we must elect a Mayor and a Council. They wanted us to suppress our love for Country Living and embrace Urbanization, the C & Cs and the 3EOs told us.

Unfairly fearing, as it proved to be, the effects of the Professional Proselytizers, I suppressed my urge to draw attention to the prevailing colonization of our society. As I saw it, of urgency was fending off Urbanization, and as it happened, the people cleared my mind of the momentary doubts about the potency of democracy.

The Demo (of Demo cracy) sent the C & C to oblivion and the 3EOs to become turncoats. The 3EOs declared a newfound solemn dedication to reforming the Islands Trust and make it what is should be instead of what it is. Having switched sides, the 3EO’s told us that they will route out island to a new (but May-or-less) Jerusalem. Since then, to make us forget the governance thing, they fired up the afterburners to push the Boardwalk all along the waterfront. They heard on that from the people too, and now thye lie low.

They will not decolonize us, it is we, the people who can and must do it. I think a good place to start is the top. The Chairman of the Local Trust Committee is a discernible wrong, a personification of colonialism. Turning our efforts to dispensing with him, will serve well the cause of decolonization.

The LTC Chairperson is an alien to the island, catapulted onto our shores to serve as the Colonial overseer. And we are made to pay for that, to boot.

To obfuscate the nonsense of it all and to apeace us, the colonial master of our “local government”, invariably open the LTC meetings by informing attendees about his democratic pedestal. He explains that he is an elected Trustee in Thetis Island; and he is elected Chair of the Trust Council and of the Executive Committee; and elected to the other Committee-Chairships of his thick portfolio.

With these “elections”, he seeks to impress on us, I presume, how luck we are to have him come to “quasi Mayor” us. He wants us to rest assured that he is democratically legit.

Chairman Luckham was elected by, and accordingly is accountable to 157 voters of Thetis Island. Only sophistries may couch his claim of legitimacy of “Mayoring” us. Simply said, 157 votes of Thetis are utterly sufficient to elect a village dog catcher in SaltSpring - it surely does not suffice to elect him President of the 25,000 people Trust Republic. And to moonlight as the quasi Mayor of the 10,000 islanders of SSI. And that is that.

It should never have happened and doing away with it is overdue. Local government must be locally elected, locally located, locally accountable. The Mayor-o-cratization of an alien Islander must end. This, the sooner the better for us and yes, for the Trust.

There are many solutions to this and like Gen MacArthur once said: I shall return.

Tom Varzeliotis