Democracy and prejudice

[pengolodh_sc <pengolodh_sc@yahoo.no>]

No: HPFGUIDX 50766

--- In HPforGrownups, Tom Wall wrote:
[snip]
> Regarding the justice question, I mean in the sense
> only of wizard events colliding with the muggle world.  
> I.e.: the catalyst event for Sirius going to Azkaban 
> was the death of muggles. If the MoM is connected to 
> the real British government, do you think they'd (the
> "real" British gov't) allow a 13-time murderer to go 
> to a wizards prison?

I would suspect that if they were aware of conditions at Azkaban, 
they would not, out of humanitarian reasons.  But was not the story 
given the muggles at the time that it was a gas-explosion, with Fudge 
only informing the muggles that Black was a murderer after he escaped?

[snip]

> I add:
> You know, I was thinking about this point, and when
> was fourteen (Harry's age in GoF), President Clinton 
> was getting elected in the U.S.. I *definitely* knew 
> about that election, whether I was interested in it 
> or not. And I definitely knew about elections that came
> before that.
> 
> So, I guess I would say that, if the WW were in any
> way democratic, we would have had to've heard, at 
> least once, of some kind of election.

Provided that there has been an election in the wizarding-world in 
the period described in the books.  If I recall correctly, the normal 
length of a parliamentary term in Great Britain is five years, 
although the government may choose to call for a general election 
sooner than that.  A general election also elects the whole 
Parliament in one go (rather than the US system, where I believe they 
have an election for Congress-members every second year), and there 
are, as far as I know, no national-level direct elections to 
political office, so there will be no large elections between the 
general elections.  

So, if the wizarding Britain has a similar system, and there were a 
general election in the wizarding world in September the year before 
Harry went to Hogwarts, then there wouldn't need to be a general 
election again until September in Harry's fifth year, i.e. during 
OotP.

Of course, it is quite possible that the wizarding world is 
controlled by, say, a House of Gentlemen, the members of which hold 
property, and whose families have held the same property for a given 
number of generations - so no real elections, but a wizard can work 
on raising his family to gentry-status, though it will take a few 
generations, and get a political influence.

[snip]
> I'd also like to offer an alternative to the listies' and
> Catlady's interpretation of the quote:
> 
> Couldn't Modesty's "... IF I had one..." [emphasis 
> is my own] quote be interpreted to mean that no-one 
> had a vote?

I do think that she must know of the concept of vote from somewhere - 
meaning that somebody would need to have a vote, in order for her to 
make a note that she has none.

Best regards
Christian Stubø