A citizen in Tunis shows off a memento of his first free and fair vote. Creative Commons / Freedom at Issue
Tunisia has just held the first free elections of the Arab Spring, nine months after the fall of former President Zinedine el Abidine Ben Ali. There are also feverish meetings, summits galore in Brussels and elsewhere to save the Euro. Then there are the questions around Col Muammar Gaddafi’s death. I guess news in the US is headed by President Obama’s announcement that the last American soldiers will leave Iraq by the end of this year, drawing to a close an eight-year war that cost the lives of more than 4,400 US troops. Over 10,000 Iraqi troops and police, and well over 100,000 Iraqi civilians.
But there’s another event that I’m pretty sure hasn’t been dominating your foreign news headlines. Well below the radar screens of all but the most fanatical ‘world-watchers’. A general election for the Swiss parliament.
I’m a convinced democratic. Lower case – a believer in democratic values. As a non-American I wouldn’t hazard a comment on US politics here. My Swiss daily newspaper had a cartoon of a Swiss couple walking past some of the many posters that mark our campaigns, and the man’s saying ‘the only country in the world where we vote to change nothing’. As a dutiful citizen, I read through the 32-page booklet that I got through the post of ‘spicy recipes’ of the different parties for the Federal stew that makes Swiss politics, ending with a real recipe for Engadine barley soup.
The result is not a political earthquake, a few percentage points one way or another, a minor shift in the complex coalitions. A minor strengthening of the left and right, a weakening of the traditional parties of the centre, and modest gains for two new centre parties…
I look to North Africa, Libya and Syria, to Myanmar, and reflect on the brave people who risk prison, torture and death for the dignity of having their say, of participating in the processes of decision-making.
The street demonstrations in Wall Street, and now across Europe as well, all in countries with democratically elected governments, reflects a disturbing and growing disaffection and cynicism about the efficacy of the way the democratic systems works. And Switzerland’s sadly no exception. It takes a miracle for the turn-out to reach 50% – and there was no miracle this time round.
Those who believe in democracy clearly have an up-hill struggle to convince our fellow-citizens that this is the best way of having our say. Any ideas?