The world is more polarized than ever, but in this coming year hundreds of millions of humans are going to go to the polls to elect their representatives. Democracy is the most sustainable of fatigues because it does not definitively solve problems, but rather straightens them and postpones them until new formulas are found as a result of pact or transaction.
No one would have suspected four years ago, for example, that Greece would be considered the most successful country in 2023 by The Economist magazine. The reasons are not ideological but rather policies that had a lot to do with reality. Prime Minister Kiriakos Mitsotakis (New Democracy), an old-fashioned conservative, took the country from the extreme left of Syriza, which was on the verge of causing the Greek expulsion from the euro, to become one of the economies that have grown the most. of the Union.
It has reduced tensions with neighboring Turkey, managed to cope with the catastrophic consequences of the earthquake and has revolutionized the way in which Greeks interact with the State through a digitalization program, which has reached the vast majority of citizens.
But the erosion of power is taking its toll on Mitsotakis and when elections are held, he will probably not have, according to polls, a sufficient majority to continue governing without the support of minority groups that are now harshly attacking him from the opposition. The year begins, therefore, with the weakness of governments that have parliamentary majorities, but that do not connect with the society they serve. It is not new, but today there is still a great disparity between the rulers and the governed.
Progressive and conservative elites discuss and debate among themselves about societies that are in their imaginations, but that do not represent the country that exists in human concerns. The extreme right is not fought with rhetoric but with policies that make societies more just, more respectful, more prosperous and less unequal.
The political media circuit cannot presume to know all the responses to the crises of the liquid society, of consumers with little time to make their own judgment, without taking the precaution of finding out the causes of discontent. It is not sensible to govern for half the country, thinking that those who have not voted for the current government are all wrong and do not deserve due attention.
The fragility of democracies requires more bridges and fewer walls, more knowledge of reality and less rhetoric about ideal worlds. Every time someone tries to create a new country or a new man, I don’t know whether to be scared or smile. Societies exist and so do countries. What we have to do is govern well, as Josep M. Bricall says with ironic skepticism.
The administration of the future with all artificial intelligence and its derivatives will have to be done with rigor, solvency, decency and justice to aspire to build human-sized, imperfect and vulnerable societies.
Zygmunt Bauman confessed at the end of his days that modernity was born under the sign of an unprecedented confidence: we can achieve it and, therefore, we will achieve it, that is, we can refound the human condition and turn it into something better than it has been until now. now. It was Barack Obama’s triumphant motto in 2008 with that “Yes, we can”, so suggestive and so human, that his successor was none other than Donald Trump, the most dystopian of American presidents, who could repeat his term this year. anus. Pablo Iglesias’ Podemos was a confusing copy of that Obama cry.
It is not wise to make predictions about 2024 that has just begun. I want to keep an optimistic vision, that of the glass half full, despite so many prophets of misfortune.
Europe and the Western world will move forward and overcome the uncertainties that loom in the short and medium distance. As long as you lose the fear of accepting, dialoguing and dealing with others to find common points. There are no unique or irreversible solutions to the complexity of things. All that is required is respect for the adversary, with whom common points can be found to resolve common problems, which always have reasonable solutions accepted by the vast majority of centrality.
