There’s more to democracy than institutions, parties, elections and parliamentary seats. Than anniversaries, receptions and tributes.
But that’s not to say it’s a free-for-all in whose name anyone and everyone can give free rein to their worst instincts and behaviors.
And that’s because, above all else, democracy is a culture.
A way of thinking and acting that defines and unites those who want to be part of what we call a democratic system.
Unfortunately, it isn’t always clear where the boundary lies between what is acceptable and what is not. Indeed, when someone behaves in a truly unacceptable way, they are often seen to be exercising a right. Indelicacy, rudeness, vulgarity and intolerance are paraded as proof of a free or restless spirit.
Which makes it imperative that we stigmatize those who stray beyond the bounds of what is tolerable in a democratic culture.
Christos Polakis, the MP for Chania, has never complied with these conventions, nor ever wanted to.
But that’s not the worst thing. That a parliamentary party should be willing to tolerate uncivilized behavior and boorishness, the rejection of democratic propriety, the violation of every measure of decency–that, mind-boggling as it is, is the real tragedy here.
Polakis’ Way may have suited Tsipras or Kasselakis, Polakis himself or the other SYRIZA MPs who weren’t too embarrassed to defend him. But it was a very poor match for democracy. And they were slow to realize that–if they ever did…
On the other hand, what good are politics, ideology and highfalutin pronouncements about justice if we bypass the basics and trample the fundamentals underfoot?
Democracy is a shared desire to live together. To coexist in an open-hearted way, without hatred, threats and bullying.
To disagree, of course, and to counter-propose and compete. But on terms and in a style that allows us all to coexist within our democratic culture. With its limits, its rules and conventions.
And this coexistence is called into question by a divisive Polakis-type model.
Over the half century in which our democracy has been growing, the first stage in its evolution was transforming the old polarizing two-party system into something more civilized.
Then it took time, and a lot of missteps, for SYRIZA and the Left in general to shed the hostility and social hatred it had bandied around with such carefree abandon during the era of Memoranda and the ‘Troika’.
Democracy has turned a page now. Parliamentarianism is running smoothly, as are our institutions. The rule of law is well established, as borne witness to by the latest European Commission report (23/7).
So is everything fine? Quite possibly not.
But if we are to make further progress, we must first cast out our worst selves.
