The electoral process and the pre-election run are expected to theoretically constitute the celebration and triumph of democracy.
This is the period during which the full community, which is simply a civic nation, is allowed to execute as a real entity. So much for theory. Practice is much more modest. But fresh Polish electoral campaigns have shown that even modest applicable benefits are increasingly hard to talk about.
Let us leave on the side an idealistic, naive imagination of election as the empowerment of citizens. First of all, it should be remembered that in the current realities, the consequence of voting changes very little. The interests of key actors (international structures, geopolitical decision-making centres, influential interest groups – abroad and national ones) are the subject of systemic guarantees, from which no 1 allowed to participate in political and formation elections is going to give up. The stabilized, ossified strategy does not naturally tolerate any transformational leaders.
Only those who are guided by transactional logic, who are aware of their real small importance in real decision-making processes, are allowed to enter political leadership. This is not a fresh situation; erstwhile an external decision-making entity, whose acceptance was essential to carry out any personnel changes within the political class, was Moscow. After 1989 it was replaced by Washington and having a fluid form and hard to specify precisely the nature of external capital structures. Elections can at most change something in secondary matters, sometimes barely cosmetic, although not entirely for citizens who are not important. But let us not imagine that they may have brought any alternate in a strategical dimension.
However, electoral run is simply a time that can be utilized in teaching, developing the community's ability to deliberalize, which is to consider a number of public problems peacefully. In these discussions a community of diversity should be forged, but capable of genuine dialogue. Discussions in the pre-election period may be the minute erstwhile the full political nation sits at a big, common, household table and advises on what to do next. Despite the powerlessness of the local political class indicated above, specified a discussion can alone be the value of the electoral process, or indeed the accompanying election. It's a time erstwhile we can make citizenship, intellectually. For the benefit of all of us, due to the fact that possibly at a time of geopolitical turmoil, which is accelerating more and more around us, it will turn out that at any point we will be left alone, without curatels afraid with the problem of our own endurance of the centres of influence and control.
Once again, we did not take advantage of the electoral period. Political messages have been vulgarized, reduced and shallow. In fact, in the last fewer months, there has not been a single discussion on crucial topics, conducted in a serious way and involving the community. No real debates were organised between the candidates. The second may have been beneficial to them, due to the fact that most of them are not ready for any form of polemic form. The election brought one more time to the competition of impressions, emotions, not even passwords. The latter, carrying voters over the years any essence of the program, yielded to primitive calls specified as “like us, who”, or “like us, they”. The election exam failed not so much the political class, whose level has been widely known for years and demolishes consistently faster. Our national-citizen community failed this test. After all, it was us voters who were incapable to enforce from any clear declarations, clear programme announcements, in a word of any general even, thoughts. Traditionally, a large part of our countrymen have decided to stay in their homes, refusing to participate in a performance that has long not entertained them.
And we stayed for the next fewer years with a political class that knows that Poles do not require anything from it. Even the ability to think, argue and express views. Exceptions to this regulation selected for parliamentary and legislature benches, of course, exist. However, there are not adequate of them so that we can observe any intellectual activity in the parliamentary forum.
Mateusz Piskorski
Think Poland, No. 43-44 (22-29.10.2023)
