With just three weeks to go until the European elections, you might say we’re in the home straight. But to what?
An electoral contest that has provoked nothing but yawns, and whose outcome everyone has rushed to predict with impatient over-confidence.
The only event that actually looked and felt like an election rally was Edi Rama’s in Galatsi, though it was all a bit pointless, seeing as Albania won’t be going to the polls till next year.
And I won’t go on about us voting for Europe without anyone actually saying anything about Europe. Not again. I’ve reconciled myself to it: maybe we should just accept that we’re not that interested, that we don’t understand that much, but it’s ok.
I won’t even say that we’re about to vote in elections whose outcome will clearly have little or no impact on how Greece is ruled.
Not only because you never know. But mostly because (to be honest), there doesn’t seem to be that much at stake.
Pretty much the only real question mark is over how many people won’t bother voting at all. Because that will affect the percentages won by the different parties, even if it doesn’t change the size of the overall groupings in the European Parliament.
But even so, there’s more at stake than we think. First and foremost, there are the individuals involved.
As self-indulgent as they were ineffective, the previous batch of Greek MEPs proved utterly incapable of reining in the coordinated bad-mouthing of Greece in the European Parliament. Indeed, they sometimes joined in.
Which means it matters who we end up sending there. They can help, but they can also hinder.
But what counts most of all is how they view the work they were elected to do. They may lack even a rudimentary knowledge of European politics, but they should at least demonstrate some sense of national responsibility.
Who can forgot that there have been Greek MEPs in the past who unquestioningly adopted the misinformation spread by shadowy circles with ulterior motives on the immigration issue? Well, “dead little Maria” is still laughing in their faces from Evros.
The European media and the polls in every member state all agree that the new European Parliament will have a more right-wing orientation.
The question is how Greece deals with the new distribution of power, given that it is weakly represented at best in several important political groups (Social Democrats, Liberals, Greens, Conservatives and Reformists).
It won’t be easy. It would help somewhat if the MEPs we elect in Greece have even a rudimentary understanding of how the system works, but I won’t be holding my breath—I’m not that much of a dreamer.
After all, what sort of expectations can you have of representatives elected amidst a symphony of yawns?
