It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgement, his enlightened conscience he ought not to sacrifice to you; to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
We may think it is obvious what a Member of Parliament is. But it could be worthwhile to reflect on the experience of great MPs of the past – no matter what the Parliament they served in. Burke makes two points eloquently. An MP has to be devoted to the interests of his constituents: he or she has to be aware of the issues that concern them and he has to weight these issues in his mind as he takes his place in Parliament. But when he gets there he is no longer simply a member for Bristol or a member of this or that party.
He is a member of Parliament. And this means that he has to speak and vote – not according to the interests of the people of Bristol or even of his own party. He has to represent all the people and not just those who voted for him. He has to have the common good of the all as his focus. He has to act according to his unbiased opinion, his mature judgement, his enlightened conscience.’ If he fails he is failing the people who voted for him – and he is failing his country.
Recently The Herald gave us a headline, Indigenisation Bill sails through Parliament.’ The impression given is that its passage through Parliament was almost mechanical. It was just given a rubber stamp. Few exercised their mature judgement’ critically examining the bill and all its implications. Is it so obvious that indigenisation’ is going to contribute economic solutions?
The desire to advance local management and ownership may be a noble one but is it so simple? I have just heard of a gold mine that has hardly produced an ounce of gold in the past week. The electric power keeps failing and sometimes miners are left underground. Is passing an indigenisation bill and handing ownership over to sons of the soil going to solve our power problems?
6 October 2007