The cliché of the celebration of democracy to refer to the elections is on the decline. As Rocío Jurado sang, perhaps our love is breaking from using it so much. And we should fall in love again. Nothing to do with the percentage of participation, but with sticking to the idea that the elections, beyond the practical consequences, are above all a liturgical celebration. Because this is what we are talking about when we sanctify the symbolic burden that accompanies the physical act of voting as a way of shoring up coexistence, managing differences and offering the possibility to each citizen to influence the path that a society must choose in order to advance as a whole towards a good life, or at least a better one.
But let’s admit that the party is getting a little sour for us for a while now. And not because it is accompanied by incidents. Nothing like that. Voting always works like clockwork. It happens, however, that the election day, what from the already lost naivety we called the party, is just one more piece, certainly the most colorful, of democratic thinking and acting. Without voting there is no democracy, but suffrage alone does not give it its full meaning.
Let’s take as an example a major holiday in a town or city. For this community, the patron saint’s festival is nothing more, or so it should be in order to keep the meaning, than the maximum expression of pride and gratitude for living ordinary and in common for twelve months. A celebration of the collective self exhibited through a program of parties but forged without stridency every day over the months.
Electoral days must operate in the same way. They are a party, yes. But it can only maintain its original character if it feeds on the daily life of what happens between one election and the next. Days that should also be the subject of a humble celebration of politics, albeit silent and unconscious. And the latter is what is slipping away from us very quickly.
The presumption of political goodness in the other has evaporated. The true belief that the political project of those who think differently, even if at the antipodes of our way of seeing things, also responds to the objective of improving things. We are cornered in the drawer of oblivion that the recognition of victories and the assumption of defeats is not just a protocol formality, but requires a very specific type of behavior that must be evident in the daily practice of all political actors in all institutions.
The polarization, which is increasingly pronounced, does not choose this path. It respects formal democracy but weakens its foundation: the permanent recognition of the other. Today, as we vote in an election based on irreconcilable blocs, it is worth remembering.
Tonight we will know, or maybe not, the government formula that will govern the coming years not only of our collective living, but also, in an age when governments have already entered the kitchen of our homes, many of the private aspects of what we do as individuals. And comforted or not, feeling like winners or losers, we should avoid experiencing defeat as feeling the other’s boot on our throat or managing victory as the spoils of war that gives us permission to put ours on the faces of others.
And what is the point of writing in the first person? Isn’t it the responsibility of politicians to strengthen this way of doing things that goes beyond the ballot box? Aren’t they the ones who can and must administer defeat naturally and victory generously?
Yes. The main work is theirs. But the fact that the ruler and the elected office do not fulfill their obligations does not force us all to allow ourselves to be dragged to the precipice of the polarization and delegitimization of the opponent. There is always a space of individual resistance. And you must take the opportunity to dig your feet, at least your own, into the tile of feeling and acting fully democratic.
This does not mean the renunciation of one’s convictions. Nor should this way of doing things be confused with a pusillanimous or resigned attitude towards what we dislike or that we directly consider unacceptable. But democratic militancy requires continuous respect – not only today – for forms and the choice of words and speeches that do not deteriorate its most basic foundations. Day after day. That would be enough for today’s party, which is less than it has been, to fully recover its meaning. And also because the hangover was at least unbearable.
