“Nearly 87% of French people aged 18 to 25, and more than 66% of French people registered on the electoral lists, all age categories combined, shunned the ballot boxes in the first round of departmental and regional elections. How did we get there ? The complexity of the electoral rules, the simultaneous organization of two elections, the end of long months of confinement cannot alone explain a deep feeling of powerlessness on the part of the politician.
Politics will not be able to meet short-term needs
The maximization of individual desires and pleasures creates an illusory, necessarily frustrated expectation of immediate political action. Politics will not be able to respond to the short-term and individual needs of citizen consumers. To complex matters, no simple answer can be given. Solutions in the plural exist. They require confrontation of ideas and commitment.
For all these reasons, it is imperative to reinvest in our democracy today. Every day, in our cities, in our departments, in our regions, transitions are underway thanks to the political commitment of convinced elected officials. To enable and support these transitions, we must initiate a massive investment plan to:
– Strengthen education and in particular civic education. There is a contradiction here: our young people are always more qualified, but always vote less. Studies must form enlightened and emancipated citizens, capable of distance and critical thinking and convinced of their role in the electoral system.
– Give new meaning and height to political commitment. If administrative, centralized and accounting management has taken precedence over convictions, it is also due to a lack of new ideas. All political organizations must also be able to offer a vision of the world capable of mobilizing around it.
– Value commitment. Commitment is precious, everywhere, within the company, institutions, schools, associations. It must be valued in a concrete way because it contributes to changing the world in the service of a more just society.
– Think about information as a common good. If the press is subsidized, it is to keep it free. However, today, immediacy and social networks lock citizens into their own convictions and put the basic analysis in the background. Political action means looking up. The media must do their part.
– Decentralize and simplify the democratic exercise. Democracy is played out in the territories, on a daily basis and in proximity. The exercise by all of democracy also requires its simplification: facilitation of registration on the electoral rolls and of the proxy and electronic voting. It is time to bring politics together and limit the constraints.
– Strengthen participatory democracy. Democracy requires a vigilant and continuous presence of the citizen. Representative democracy and participatory democracy feed and strengthen each other, they are a learning process for democracy.
Elected officials will have the power to act all the stronger as citizen participation increases. For happy transitions, let’s remain convinced that the best is yet to come! “
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