Trial by Constituency - Holding parliamentarians to account

Representative democracy can't be made to work if there is no way to enforce that elected representatives actually represent their constituencies. Our current political class overwhelmingly act in the interests of vested interests who they leave parliament to be rewarded by rather than the people who elected them.

One of the fundamental problems with representative democracy is that once elected representatives are effectively impossible for voters to hold them to account. The only remedy available to voters is that should the parliamentarian stand at a subsequent election to vote against them.

Unfortunately this action provides essentially no real accountability as it undermined by the partisan system meaning voting against a candidate means voting against their party as well as being forced to vote for another candidate likely with less ideologically in common with the voter.

Also of course the politician might not stand for election again, and for most of them at that point start cashing in with the vested interests they actually represented in parliament.

However interestingly it has recently been reported that former Sports minister Bridget McKenzie could be personally liable for grants made during the sports rorts corruption. Such liability is far from established and has certainly never actually been enforced but it theoretically exists, and could be clearly articulated in law.

While the current mechanism probably only applies to the executive it could be extended to all parliamentarians to the extent they could be construed to be liable for facilitating the misconduct or corruption. Most often this would mean that partisan colleagues would be construed to have had some complicity if they did not reasonably act to address the matter.

Also interesting was when in 2019 in the UK Boris Johnson was sued for misconduct in public office, a criminal offence in common law with potentially a life sentence, relating to his lies about how much the UK paid the EU during the Brexit plebiscite.

This particular case was ultimately dismissed, but there is again theoretically at least a framework for taking action against parliamentarians for their misconduct that could be built upon. Again it at present relates to office holders, but there is no reason it couldn't be broadened to include all parliamentarians.

I would argue that parliamentarians should as a matter of course at the conclusion of their terms be subject to a trial by a jury of those they purportedly represented, a Trial by Constituency. This trial would determine if the parliamentarian has reasonably sought to implement the platform they were elected on and that they have not engaged in any misconduct or corruption.

If the parliamentarian were found to have not represented their constituents, to have misrepresented themselves to get elected, or engaged in misconduct or corruption they would be subject to penalties including most obviously being ineligible to sit in parliament.

A mechanism for instituting such proceedings before the conclusion of a term should also be available, possibly similar to a recall election, and be possible immediately after election to allow address for election by fraud. It should also be possible to bring action against a former parliamentarian who has subsequently demonstrated that they are being improperly rewarded by vested interests for actions taken while in office.

As with regular jury trials a super majority of some kind would be necessary to convict but it would be possible to hold individual parliamentarians accountable. Liability would also extend to any political party that endorsed the parliamentarian in the election and had not expelled them in a reasonable timeframe upon misconduct.

Our current system does nothing to address corruption or misconduct, does nothing to address the rewards that currently accrue to those who campaign based on solely on lies and fear campaigns to get through elections. There are not effective checks or balances. The represented need ways to take action against representatives who betray them for the system to really work.

If nothing is done the credibility of democracy will continue to be eroded away to nothing from the little credibility it still retains.