IMPORTANCE OF PARLIAMENT IN 21st CENTURY
IMPORTANCE OF PARLIAMENT IN 21st CENTURY: A VIEW FROM JERSEY What is the nature of being a Commonwealth Parliamentarian in the 21st century and the importance of Parliament being reflective and responsive to the needs of society? In short, Parliaments enable every citizen to become involved in the governing of a nation and to do this, they bring together the representatives of those people and I believe there is no more evocative image of this assembling of people than the ancient Parliament of Iceland, the ‘Althing’, which is believed to be the oldest active parliament in the world (not to be confused with the Isle of Man’s Tynwald, which is the world’s oldest continuously active Parliament). I had the privilege to visit the site of this ancient Parliament in 2017, about 9 months before I stood for election myself. It is hard to understate the magnificence of the setting on plains beneath a magnificent cliff and at the point of division of two continents. The Althing was established in about 930 AD and “laid the foundation of independent national existence in Iceland. All free men could attend the assemblies, which were usually the main social event of the year and drew large crowds of farmers and their families, parties involved in legal disputes, traders, craftsmen, storytellers and travellers.”1 The gathering must have been an incredible site, particularly as those attending the assembly lived in temporary camps throughout the session. Iceland is a vast, beautiful and formidable island. Its geography is like no other place on Earth and yet to stand at the location where 1,000 years ago, early Icelanders would travel hundreds of miles through goodness knows what kind of weather, to gather together with the communal intention of guiding their nascent community to a brighter future, was a deeply humbling experience and one which fixed very clearly in my mind and my heart, the most basic meaning of ‘Parliament’ and the institution’s purpose. I have already mentioned the fact that Parliaments exist as one of three branches of government and in my view, they are the most important. In most modern forms of government, the Executive, that
Deputy Kirsten Morel was first elected to the States of Jersey in May 2018,
as Deputy for St Lawrence, having previously worked as a technology and finance writer. He chairs the Economic and International Affairs Scrutiny Panel and the ‘Brexit’ Review Panel in the States Assembly and he is Vice-Chairperson of the CPA Jersey Branch Executive Committee.
40 | The Parliamentarian | 2021: Issue One | 100 years of publishing
Reference: 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Althing
Amidst all the noise generated by the politics that takes place within Parliaments throughout the democratic world, it is surprisingly easy to forget the crucial role they play as the foundation stones of our democracies. Parliaments are not just one of the three main arms of modern governments, acting as the legislature, the law-making body alongside the Executive and the Judiciary, Parliaments are much more than that. They are vital institutions in the story of every democratic nation no matter how large or small. Indeed, I don’t believe it is an exaggeration to say that Parliaments are the principle national institution. Unlike the Judiciary or the Executive, Parliaments bind the various peoples of democratic nations together and the best way to understand that role is to go back to basics to understand the word ‘Parliament’ itself, as well as to look at one of those earliest Parliaments that unintentionally created the templates upon which our modern Parliaments are modelled. ‘Parliament’, the word, is derived from old French, indeed modern French speakers will recognise its roots from the word ‘parler’ - to speak, and indeed at the most basic analysis, a Parliament is a channel of expression and it is this role that underpins its importance in democratic states. One of the key tensions in any jurisdiction is that between the individual and the society in which they live. All people have the desire to express their opinions but for a nation to act on every single view expressed would of course be unworkable, leading to social chaos rather than social harmony. Representative Parliaments provide an institutional filtering mechanism that enables the views of the individual to be expressed and then combined with those of others through amendment and compromise before finally being put to the test via a vote, which enables the majority to adopt their preferred way forward.
