Editorial. Less than two months before the presidential election, the government is trying to avert the risk of abstention by launching a communication campaign to encourage citizens to register on the electoral lists. The initiative, late, is however welcome when we see that 6% of those of voting age did not bother to take this step. Whether out of carelessness, indifference or spite, this civic disengagement, which strikes young people in particular, is poisonous for democracy.
It tends to distort the political projection of the country by giving the bonus to the most mobilized. At the same time, it contributes to fueling violence once morest a system accused of no longer properly fulfilling its role of representation. The record level of abstention reached in the 2020 municipal elections and the 2021 regional election goes hand in hand with the rise in acts of violence committed once morest elected officials. Individualistic withdrawal, the loss of collective landmarks do not in themselves explain the crisis of the ballot paper. At the rate of alternations, the idea developed that politicians were incapable of keeping their promises, that they were powerless to change lives. So what good is it?
In this context of extreme distrust, the first priority would be for the political actors to agree to review their partition by combining modesty and pedagogy. If they want to have a chance of not disappointing, they must provide the keys to understanding a particularly complex era, then be able to generate support around a project marked out by a few achievable objectives. Instead, since the start of the presidential campaign, we have witnessed an inflation of promises and an instrumentalization of fears once morest a backdrop of intense competition on the far right of the political field.
Complexity of the word “representation”.
At the end of a five-year period marked by three crises – social, climatic and health – the absence of a general framework on the major issues of the period – global warming, the distribution of income, the weight of the debt – leads to a a disturbing and unbalanced campaign, insofar as one of the main actors, the outgoing president, is still absent.
To lay the blame solely on political representation, however, would be unfair. To fight once morest democratic apathy, we must reengage the citizen, involve him directly in decision-making, make him understand the complexity of the word “representation”. The experience of the great debate, following the crisis of the “yellow vests”, was only partially successful, given that many notebooks of grievances remained piled up in boxes instead of being immediately exploited.
The Citizens’ Climate Convention, which worked between October 2019 and June 2020, was both promising and frustrating. Promising because it enabled 150 citizens drawn by lot and duly informed to draw up a certain number of specific proposals for combating global warming. Frustrating because many of its participants did not understand that the government and Parliament, mindful of their prerogatives, do not retain the result of their work as a whole. The tension between direct democracy and representative democracy was palpable. It is not redhibitory. Both have their place, provided they agree to fertilize each other instead of confronting each other. We must persevere on this path.
