From the elections to the conscious abstention

bulgaria | politics | review Sunday, 23 October 2011, 09:39 by initiative for direct democracy

 

 The process of elections is asking from us to give for free, through the ballot box, our power and our right of the political decisions to the hands of some representatives.  That means with few words, to decide NOT for our lives but who will decide for our lives. This is one more new episode of the modern tragedy with the title “representative democracy”. And it s really a tragedy because in previous regimes the authority was a matter of a violent enforcement, while today the oppressed themselves alone are voting who will rule them.

 The proposed abstention from the elections is not sentimental reaction or apathy, but a conscious choice with logical arguments. With our refuse to vote we show our real refuse to the representation. With few words, we don t imagine a world separated to rulers and ruled. Let s don t forget that the problem of hierarchy is above all moral. Everything starts from the question: how much we participate in the decisions. And with which way? Through representatives? The problem is not the election of someone in order to make something concrete for a group of people. The problem is the absolute power that exercised on us.

 What we mean: in a free organization of our social life, the decisions shall be taken through direct-democratic processes. The term “representative” in those cases means something different and has at least 2 different characteristics from what we know today:

1. The representative must express the opinion of the group which he represents. He has a specific mission and after this he must leave his position due to the principles of rotation and revocation. Exactly the opposite is happening in the today “democracy” where the representative will keep his position for at least 4 years! During this time the representative has the right to take any kind of decisions, to create laws and institutions. The possibilities that the society has to stop him are very limited.

2. The second and most important difference of the term “representative” is that he shall not have the right to decide for us but only to transfers our opinion. This unfortunately is not happening today as he exercises his absolute power and imposes laws to the entire society. Here is the fundamental difference between the 2 meanings of the word “representative”, the difference between direct and representative democracy or better the difference between democracy and state authority (or oligarchy or parliamentary dictatorship etc, depending how you prefer to call it).

 

 The society delegates the authority in one minority and determines experts for the solution to its own problems. In this way, who decides for the European Union and for the so-called “economical development” always against the simple people? For the poverty and the wars? For the unemployment or the poor education? Whose choice is everything?

 There is need for a new culture that will turn from, what we call today, the body of voters and tax payers to active and free humans. A culture that will recreate “face to face” human relations in a local level and that will be in the future a realistic alternative against the centralization of the state or of other supranational mechanisms. In a local level, structures such as autonomous social centers or neighborhood assemblies can give the realistic alternative from today.

 Also there is the need to develop alternative participatory models of economy.

 The last years we see such efforts around the world such as the self-management of the working places by the workers, assemblies in the squares, creation of autonomous ecologist communities. There, the people turned their backs to the authorities and to the big or small parties. They deal with different social problems such as the land, the hospitals, the houses, the creation of local coins etc. There, they realize that the everyday personal problems are deeply connected with the people next to them and that the solutions must come in coordination with everyone.

 Let’s count the real participation and the daily activities of us in our cities and our neibourhoods and not in the crossing of some candidates in a paper. Then, we will realize that our participation in the elections has meaning only for the ones that are ruling or want to rule us!