DEMOCRACY ISN'T ABOUT BUILDING POWER

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 12, 1992                   TAG: 9201130238
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: B-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short
DEMOCRACY ISN'T ABOUT BUILDING POWER
A LETTER ("Voters forfeited Macfarlane's power," Jan. 2) excoriated Roanoke Valley voters for their failure to recognize "the importance of the power base that Sen. Macfarlane has built . . . his successor will be unable to get a bill passed while in office; nor will he be able to appoint his supporters to positions of power in the state government."
As an occasional visitor to your city, I don't know why the voters saw fit to oust Sen. Macfarlane. But this I do know: Democracy is not about building power bases, or appointing one's supporters to positions of power. Those are the trappings of our system of government, not its base.
Is it reasonable to base the support of a candidate solely on his or her seniority, power and rights of patronage? Only if one believes that an elective seat belongs to the person sitting in it, not to the electorate; and believes further that once elected, an officeholder should never be unseated, lest that person's power be abrogated.
That isn't what democracy is all about. Democracy is about the right of the people, when they are displeased by their representation, to vote it out and vote someone else in. What Sen. Macfarlane's supporter seems to want sounds more like oligarchy, a form of government in which a small group exercises control of the government for corrupt or selfish purposes.
Any time a politician's chief reasons for being re-elected are power and patronage, that politician has forgotten why he or she was elected in the first place, and it's time to let someone else have a shot at it. That's democracy. JOHN MEANS WASHINGTON, D.C.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB