Democracy in critical care as coronavirus
disrupts governments
Travel bans and social distancing prompt changes to
politics as usual — and fears of executive overreach.
By DAVID M.
HERSZENHORN 3/24/20, 4:01 AM CET Updated 3/24/20, 8:25 PM CET
The
European Parliament, seen here during a plenary session on March 10, 2020, has
canceled all but its most critical meetings due to the coronavirus | Kenzo
Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
Coronavirus
is forcing governments to conjure up survival skills — not just for their
citizens, but for democracy itself.
Faced with
unprecedented disruption to the decision-making machinery of government —
including travel bans and social-distancing restrictions on large meetings —
officials in capitals worldwide have scrambled to adopt new working methods,
including meetings by videoconference, and remote voting by ministers and
parliaments.
Many
legislatures, including the European Parliament, have already canceled all but
the most essential meetings and debates until further notice — an acceptance,
however reluctant, of the enormous logistical obstacles they now confront.
But there
are also worries of potentially dangerous breakdowns in checks and balances, as
well as concerns that authoritarian-minded leaders could exploit public fear
over the pandemic to weaken democratic institutions at a time of vulnerability.
Hungarian
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is now pushing for legislation that would give him
sweeping emergency powers to rule the country by decree for an extended period
— prompting criticism from human rights officials.
Political leaders, like everyone else, face personal
danger of infection.
But even in
capitals where such power-grabs are unlikely, the imposition of states of alarm
or emergency — as exist now in many EU countries — has led some officials to
conclude that new mechanisms may be needed to safeguard the role of lawmakers,
and to preserve democratic scrutiny of the executive authorities.
On Sunday,
President of the Italian Senate Elisabetta Casellati issued an extraordinary statement,
insisting that the parliament is still in business and calling on Prime
Minister Giuseppe Conte and his government to strengthen consultation with the
Senate, as well as the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies.
"The
centrality of Parliament can never fail, especially when government measures
limit citizens' personal freedoms and activities essential to the country's
economy," Casellati said. "It is therefore essential that the prime
minister and the government establish a systematic link, which has never been
implemented, with the presidents of the chambers regarding any regulatory
initiative relating to the coronavirus emergency."
In Italy
and elsewhere, however, it's far from clear whether governments will indeed
continue functioning as normal as all branches of government come under
unprecedented pressure.
Political
leaders, like everyone else, face personal danger of infection. Prince Albert
of Monaco, as well as the first ladies of Canada and Spain, have already tested
positive for the virus. On Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel went into
self-isolation, raising fears that Europe could face part of the crisis without
its most seasoned leader on the front line. Some governments, like the U.K.,
have raced to clarify succession plans.
In
Washington, at least five Republican senators are sidelined because they were
infected or exposed to the coronavirus, potentially imperiling passage of
emergency legislation to support the U.S. economy, and highlighting the risk of
government paralysis as elected officials tasked with responding to the crisis
fall ill.
The U.S.
has yet to come up with a Plan B to keep Congress running, even as the Trump
administration has sought new powers for the Justice Department to request
indefinite detentions without trial during emergencies — highlighting the
worries about executive overreach while legislatures struggle to function.
The absence
of the five Republican senators has cut the majority control of President
Donald Trump's party to just one vote — 48 to 47 — and left them a solid dozen
short of the 60 votes needed to overcome various procedural hurdles that must
be cleared before legislation like the giant €1.8 trillion stimulus bill can be
adopted by a simple majority.
Dick
Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, and Rob Portman, a Republican from Ohio, have
urged a change to the standing rules to allow senators to vote from outside the
chamber during a crisis. But changing the rules itself requires a two-thirds
supermajority.
Power shift
Around the
world, other governments are already taking extraordinary steps — some of which
could permanently alter how those in power take decisions, hastening the
acceptance of new technologies previously regarded as insecure or inappropriate
for official business.
Last week,
the EU's College of Commissioners held its weekly meeting by teleconference for
the first time.
On
Wednesday, during an extraordinary session of the Spanish Congress, deputies
will be able to vote remotely on two decrees related to labor and agricultural
policy as well as on urgent measures to respond to the pandemic and the
economic fallout.
And on
Thursday, the 27 heads of state and government on the European Council will
convene by videoconference, after scrapping their regularly scheduled summit in
Brussels, with the agenda narrowed to focus only on the crisis.
The frantic
efforts to keep government functioning reflect two equally vital imperatives —
a need for government action, including emergency economic measures, in
response to the crisis; and an acute desire to reassure citizens, businesses
and financial markets that the authorities are in control — even if they are
woefully unprepared for the outbreak.
In some
cases, however, officials are discovering that it is far more difficult than
expected to set aside long-established rules that mandate in-person meetings or
votes, often with a minimum number of participants required for a quorum.
On Friday,
EU ambassadors reached a deal on a plan that would suspend formal meetings of
the Council of the EU for 30 days, allowing ministers to meet instead by
videoconference. EU countries will then take formal decisions using a
streamlined "written procedure" — a longstanding mechanism by which
national capitals vote remotely on policy proposals.
"It's
critical for our business continuity," a senior EU official said. "We
cannot just run away and say, 'OK, we'll come back after the crisis.'"
But what
was expected to be a swift tweak to the rules, given the crisis, turned into
more than two days of debate, which covered the practical limitations of
videoconferences — including an inability to provide interpretation into all EU
languages — as well as the legal, philosophical and even psychological
ramifications of foregoing the in-person negotiations that are a hallmark of
the EU decision-making process.
"We are not going from meetings to kind of
intergalactic video chats. We still have all the structures, and the written
procedure" — Senior ambassador
"These
rules of procedure are there not just because we are rule fetishists," the
EU official said. "They are there because they are addressing some very
real concerns and those concerns are about protecting the rights of member
states."
The
ambassadors shied away from a more far-reaching change that would have afforded
videoconference meetings formal status. The top concerns were practical, and
also related to the legal implications of the move. "Because it's about
lawmaking, we have to do it right," a senior ambassador said.
A second
senior ambassador portrayed the 30-day change as a moderate contingency
measure. "We are not going from meetings to kind of intergalactic video
chats," the ambassador said. "We still have all the structures, and
the written procedure."
Distant
diplomats
EU
ambassadors representing the bloc's member countries continue to meet face to
face but, to comply with social distancing, the size of delegations has been
sharply curtailed. Ambassadors are limited to at most two advisers and
sometimes none. Also, meetings are being held in the largest rooms at the
Council of the EU to create distance between participants.
At least
the EU reached a decision, with capitals officially affirming the new plan on
Monday. In Chile last week, an effort to adopt new rules to allow remote voting
failed because not enough deputies supported the change.
Across the
Western world, parliaments are wrestling with similar questions.
Graziano
Delrio, the leader of the Democratic Party in Italy's Chamber of Deputies, has
urged that plans be made to allow tele-voting. This week, the parliament is due
to hold a hearing by videoconference with Finance Minister Roberto Gualtieri,
but it's not clear Italian conservatives will ever allow remote voting.
In Spain,
nearly all parliamentary work unrelated to the coronavirus has been stopped,
despite a declaration earlier this month by the president of the Spanish
Congress of Deputies, Meritxell Batet, who said, "The Congress doesn't
close."
But Spain
is allowing remote voting, which it had previously limited only to deputies who
received advance permission to be absent for strict reasons, including pregnancy
or serious illness.
In Canada,
parliament effectively shut itself down for five weeks — a decision that was a
bit less dramatic than it seemed given that it was already scheduled to be on
recess for three of those weeks.
In the
U.K., parliament is carrying on — just with fewer parliamentarians.
There are
currently no plans for the House of Commons to stop meeting until March 31,
when a pre-planned Easter recess begins, although the opposition Labour Party
has called for that date to be brought forward by a week.
Some MPs
are nonetheless staying away, with last Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions
session one of the most thinly attended anyone in Westminster can remember.
Scrutiny of government continues via the select committee system and in circumstances
where MPs cannot attend, committee chairs are taking questions over text or
email to put to witnesses.
Still, as
any journalist will tell you, asking questions by email is not the same as
posing them in person. And reporters too face new obstacles to scrutinizing
people in power.
Elections have also been called into doubt by the
virus.
Daily press
briefings with the British prime minister’s spokesperson in Downing Street
became conference calls starting Monday. In that sense, the U.K. is just a bit
behind the European Commission, which shifted to remote-only daily news
conferences last Thursday.
Prime
Minister Boris Johnson said his recent daily news conferences on coronavirus
might need to be done by remote, though he tried to reassure reporters they
could still participate “I see your anxiety," Johnson, himself a former
journalist, told them. "I will absolutely ensure everybody gets to ask
questions.”
In Germany,
lawmakers on Monday were close to changing a requirement that more than half of
all MPs be present in person for many important votes, to limit chances of
spreading the virus within the government.
The current
rules raised the prospect that at least 355 members of the Bundestag would need
to be present in the chamber to push through emergency measures this week, at a
time when German citizens have been ordered to practice social distancing by
limiting meetings to just two people and with large gatherings banned.
Without a
change, many lawmakers were expected to watch the debate from their offices and
enter the chamber only to vote. But on Monday, political group leaders
reportedly reached a deal requiring only a quarter of MPs to be present.
Lawmakers
vote on an emergency law to face the spread of the COVID-19 infection caused by
the novel coronavirus at the French National Assembly in Paris on March 22,
2020 | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
In France,
the two-chamber parliament on Sunday voted to formally declare a health
emergency. The National Assembly, the lower house, was nearly empty when the
final decision was taken largely by proxy votes, to avoid a crowd. The bill
grants the government the power to “decide, by decree, and upon the
recommendation of the minister of health, general measures limiting freedoms to
curtail movement and crowds" and also empowers the minister to
"proceed with requisitions of of any goods and services necessary to fight
against the sanitary disaster.”
Elections
have also been called into doubt by the virus.
A second
round of French local polls has been postponed, as have presidential primary
elections in several U.S. states. But Poland is pressing ahead with plans for a
presidential election in May — even as opposition politicians complain it won't
be fair as they can't campaign effectively due to coronavirus restrictions,
giving advantage to the incumbent, Andrzej Duda.
Charlie
Cooper, Matthew Karnitschnig, Rym Momtaz and Hans von der Burchard contributed
reporting.
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