Written by
Yanis Varoufakis
When the
constitutional process of a proud European democracy seemed to be leading,
quite properly, to elections (as was the case in Greece since the Fall), the European
Commission, various governments and the commentariat-at-large intervened,
presenting the prospect of elections (the crowning moment of the democratic
process) as a disaster-in-the-making; as a calamity to be avoided at all cost.
When the elections became inescapable, the
same power brokers began to lecture the citizens of this small, proud nation on
how to vote. And when these voters seemed eager to vote differently, European
Union authorities began to warn any new government that might emerge that it
should consider itself a caretaker of the agreements that the previous
government had struck with the European Union - that any thought of
re-negotiating them should perish instantly.
Is this what our dreams of Europe have come
to? Has Europe come to a point where elections are seen as a problem, rather
than the source of solutions? Have Brussels-based government appointees grown
so stupendously arrogant as to imagine that they can tell electorates how to
vote? Have we reached a point when a people is told that if they vote in a
government that seeks to renegotiate an asphyxiating international loan
agreement, they face non-functioning ATMs within days?
There is, indeed, something amiss in our
Europe and Greece, the proverbial canary in the mine, has brought it to the
surface. Europeans from Helsinki to Lisbon and from Dublin to Cyprus must now
make it their collective business to resuscitate that which once inspired us: a
penchant for democracy.
(Source:
yanisvaroufakis.eu)
