2024-04-16 03:15:21
In the votes, which are historical documents, there lives a complex story, very uneven and very eventful. Even with all its imperfections, the democracy we know, until now, still seems to deserve the relative trust of voters and it still seems to make sense to vote. It continues to be an official way of expressing the diversity of social imaginaries to establish forms of coexistence. According to the website checkeado.com, 2024 is a “super electoral year.” Approximately 100 countries will hold elections and in 50 of them there will be votes to elect presidencies, according to official data from electoral organizations, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) and the consulting firm Anchor Change. It appears to be an all-time record. What does this mean?
Due to the diversity of their origins, votes are narrative knots preceded by very diverse conflicts. From each vote emerges a particular story and a general story that, knowingly or not, synthesizes the virtues or calamities of the context that generates them. The votes, all of them, once gathered at the polls and defining their preferences, are a crude encyclopedia of civility that, even in those places where it is mandatory, gives a shocking reflection of the political landscape of the will that incubates them and of the enormous list of social shortages necessary for a good collective life on all its scales. But it is always a partial encyclopedia. They reflect a part of the political will, but never all of it. And in the interstices there live many tricks, too.
Not all the disappointments, nor all the fatigue, nor all the ambushes that our people have suffered in the name of democracy, have managed to succumb the hope of intervening in history by collating the will of the majority with votes. Despite irregularities, insufficiencies and fraud. Beyond misrepresentations, manipulations and betrayals. Regardless of the costs, humiliations and setbacks, democracy seems worth the effort to restore enthusiasm to influence the tasks of shaping power based on electorally organized social will. It seems.
With the votes a story of knowledge and ignorance beset by tensions and interests plagued with chiaroscuros is told. The scenario for the democratic will of the people today has, paradoxically, a great global discredit on the role of the best-known political parties and yet the frontist and movement solution has taken a relevant place. The weight of the individual personality of some leaders (their fame and charisma) gained ground and a centrist or center-right ideological tendency seems to predominate. Voters still hope that elections are capable of giving birth to honest government administrations, that at least they do not steal, that they fulfill what they promise and that they do not take advantage of the trust of the majority for commercial benefits of some minority working in the dark. The left would do well to take sincere note. It’s not too much to ask.
The ideas, doctrines or programs of the organizations have been ignored and some only serve as references of “good will” or philanthropy. Ordinarily, in campaigns, little or nothing of the core historical conflicts, the capital-labor debate and the class struggle, as the case may be, are shown, and when they appear, they show signs of makeup or softness appropriate to the circumstances rather than to objective political needs. More colorful are the tricks of the propaganda industry and the demagogic balancing acts to pass off as ideal what has actually deserved repudiation. At the height of the electoral media spectacle are the histriones of the Goebbels school gesticulating formal exaggerations to hide their intellectual mediocrity. And with that some win elections democratically. There are very painful and embarrassing singing tests.
The idea that democracy should express the informed strength of the majorities, who organize to solve common problems and ensure the best use of productive forces and creative strengths, has been opposed by a circus version of the irresponsible applause meter that, without understanding the causes, , problems and solutions choose, vote and ignore the historical consequences of the often uninformed vote. The idea reigns that democracy is going to vote on such a day for some famous candidate. The historical character of the vote, its documentary weight and its political expression has been left under the ravages of a certain logic of spectacle. Very dangerous but very profitable.
This narrative complexity of the votes requires, for their issuance and their understanding, detailed decoding tasks that occupy very little of the attention of the organizations that call for voting. But it is a complexity that demands urgent attention. However arduous it may be. Each vote tells us a part of the life that animates it, with its dreams, its frustrations, its joys and its aspirations. And despite the fact that in the graphic design of the majority of the electoral ballots the protagonists are not the people or their deepest cries, despite the fact that the faces or emblems of people and parties are privileged… despite the fact that wealth history documented synthetically in the votes, is not seen with its splendor and its dilemmas, the dispute for meaning is there, the day-to-day struggle, the heartbeat of the present and the future put into battle to express themselves and express themselves to majorities and minorities.
That would be reason enough to issue ourselves with much greater respect for the electoral processes, greater care and protection of the votes, one by one, and greater collective responsibility to attend to and understand the significance of the vote in the short, medium and long term. Less handling, abuse and reductionism. Less talk and demagoguery. More and better participatory democratic passion. The votes have a lot to say and it is not always heard. Especially when there are elections. So that they are not a hoarse story in current conditions.
#Semiotics #votes #Quality #quantity #electoral