While we are waiting for the daisy to bloom and we will know whether there will be an investiture of Pedro Sánchez in November or new elections in January, the political debate (if it can be called a debate), like the planet, is gradually raising the temperature. In a democracy, politics requires a permanent contrast of ideas and programs between the various actors. And from different positions, inherent in a plural society, in the main issues, the agreement that can best serve the common good must be sought, through cooperation, dialogue, negotiation and transaction. Doing so, in addition, keeping and respecting the forms. It does not seem, however, that nowadays these are the currencies that guide political praxis nor that it is assumed that their absence results in a progressive weakening of democracy.
It is often said that our society is polarized and tense. And in a way it is (albeit in some places more than in others), but the biggest responsibility does not lie with the citizens, but with a considerable part of the current political leaders. They are the ones who have stressed him with their gestures, their words and their behavior. A democratic society requires that the representatives are able to listen to each other, that they respect each other and that they approach their differences calmly. When, on the contrary, as it happens today, what dominates is contempt and insult, the result makes impossible the cooperation that the search for the common interest requires. And consequently, it corrodes the obligatory duty to share, live with the different and learn from it.
Democracy is based on trust and if no one trusts anyone, as is the case today, the public distrusts their political representatives. This prevents anything from being built in common, which, in turn, causes a progressive erosion of institutions and, with it, of democracy itself, thus sowing the seeds of anti-political discourses, the vanguard of populism and authoritarianism . This is how democracies die today!
While cursing and disowning what some pejoratively call the “regime of 78”, the transition and the Constitution that emanated from it, the notion is being lost – I think this is precisely what some are chasing – that have been the basic pillars of the best decades of coexistence, progress, peace and… self-government for the various national realities that coexist in Spain. And decades of democracy, of course!
The eagerness that many have – expressly or tacitly – to renounce these pillars should be replaced by recovering and perfecting the values ??that have made this reality possible. Diversity must be respected and encouraged; regain control; avoid simplification (it is enough to reduce the plurality to factions or terrorists; to traitors or purists…) and, as I said, listen much more by sitting at the dialogue table and not parapeting -se behind the tweet that provokes accusations and responses without any need to motivate them.
Robert Schuman said that “democracy is a constant creation”. Or, in other words, lifelong learning. The driving energy of this constant creation, of this learning, emanates from the citizenry and when citizens, due to politics, lose sensitivity to the risk of damaging democracy itself, it runs out of energy and turn off slowly And I’m afraid that’s what’s happening to us.
