Democracy, that complex system which, under the thesis of popular sovereignty, justifies the obedience of the masses and the command of minimal leaders, has been reduced to its poorest dimension: electoralism, i.e. the return to elections, the saturation of campaigns and the promotion of characters who, depending on the direction of the propaganda, embody angelic goodness or satanic evil . Added to all this is the referendum induction, which, skilfully conducted, creates the impression that it is the people who decide on the most complex legal issues and the most urgent issues of common interest.

Other aspects that made liberal democracy an acceptable system for submitting obedience and justifying the always controversial fact of command, are buried under tons of propaganda and demagoguery, manipulations and lies, which simplify the system and reduce the discussion to a kind of catechism. , to elementary dogma. Referendums have ceased to be methods in which reason and reflection guide the decisions of voters, but have become systems for promoting exclusive ideas directed from the authorities. Disagreements, therefore, are seen as a betrayal of the homeland, as a denial of the option chosen from above. Thus, tolerance, which was linked to the old democracy, is no longer welcome. The merit of the “democrats” now lies in the degree of fundamentalism they show, in the ability to exclude the “enemy”, in the strength they invest in the affirmation of a discourse that puts them beyond any possibility of discussion.

Electoralism reduces citizens’ participation to the ritual of voting. Voters, who for months have been passive recipients of promises and complacent victims of propaganda or curious visitors to gatherings resembling sporting events, even scratch the ballot. There he ends his transient role, more emotional than rational. Later, the state machinery, arrogant, fearless, will continue its march, until the next call to the people. And the chosen one will follow the path of his electoral career.

Referendums are no longer methods in which reason and deliberation guide voters’ decisions

Electoralism perverts the political mandate – the mandate – which is the essence of the legislator’s legitimacy. When do campaigns even mention the task of enacting laws? How much is actually discussed about the bills and the ideas around them? Who dares to mention the autonomy of parliamentarians, which theoretically belongs to their voters, not the government? Who puts the bell on the cat and demands accounts of the results of the laws that have been issued and those that have not been issued, due to laziness or devotion? Aren’t all these resignations evidence of the end of democracy and the flowering of a system that exhausts “sovereignty” in forms?

To live democracy only as the climax of an event, in which people have become public spectators and transient actors in a kind of parody, is the worst service that can be done to the system. Living democracy requires discussion about it and its distortions. (OR)