European elections: Why go to vote?
(published on the VRT website) Happy Belgians or Luxembourgers… Compulsory voting obliges, you will not know the pangs in which many Europeans are plunged today. Do we really have to vote on June 7? And for whom? You will thus escape the oukaze of our political analysts who, on the very evening of the vote, will melt, with their moralizing little finger or their sympathetic eye, to analyze how many, why and how Europeans have finally preferred to stay at home rather than to go and vote to choose their MEPs. Can we really blame the citizens who abstain from voting? Yes, because if it is a victory in democracy, it is to be able to choose its elected officials. No, when we know that for several weeks, everything has been done not to encourage people to vote. If we go back to the classic mechanics of voting, we vote either for ideas, or for a person or against them. There it is rather missed.
On the program side, it's a bit like Bordeaux mixture. Great generous ideas: a revival of Europe, ecological growth, being close to citizens... But few striking ideas,
specific, concrete that allow you to answer Yes or No: Establish a financial tax on stock market gains at European level? Allow GMOs? Capping the salaries of business leaders? Difficult to know who thinks what, no one really seems capable of expressing concrete demands. No wonder the campaign is slow to start.
person side, the current President of the European Commission, candidate for his succession, José-Manuel Barroso, has been campaigning alone for several weeks. Most governments have indicated that whatever happens, it will be he who will be appointed to run the European “shop” for the next five years. Not only governments with a Christian Democrat or conservative component, of which Barroso is a member, are on this line but also several governments led by socialists (Labour Gordon Brown in the United Kingdom, Spanish socialist Zapatero). Anyway, “there is no other” we are told. For obscure campaign reasons, the Socialists are not presenting anyone. Only the Democrats presented one or two alternative candidates, Guy Verhofstadt or Mario Monti. But nothing believable. In doing so, the rulers killed and suffocated the countryside, which was already lacking in oxygen.
A real campaign would force each party to nominate the candidate it intends to lead the Commission. Citizens have the right to know, to want to vote. In these elections, the risk is therefore to have a “combat” abstention which is added to the abstentionists of “despite” or “ignorance”. And again, as in the 'No' votes of recent years in France, the Netherlands and Ireland, there will be a sort of gap which is widening a little more, a sign of mistrust vis-à-vis the Europe. It will be necessary to analyze a little more seriously the motivations of these “bouchers” of the ballot boxes. And above all, quickly find remedies. Otherwise Europe will become a matter of specialists, professionals and a few militants. And his myth could crumble...
Nicolas Gros-Verheyde, Sophie Petitjean
