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| © Marta Podniece |
The Earth is round? Right? That is the universal truth we all tend
to believe, because there has never been any discussion about it in the past
few centuries or possibly no political campaign has found it an attractive
reason to make people believe it will change something for them. Let’s face it
- we are egoists. Many things have been happening on this round ball called
Earth, especially in political matters. It’s easy to see the point of one
individual by just hearing him commenting on the news, while reading an analytic piece
on the second page of the daily newspaper every morning. This is a habit. And
politics is a habit as well. Politics of a particular newspaper, which include
choices on exactly which activities will be commented on on the second page of
the paper. Sensations? Surprises? Money laundry? Politicians involved in the
international scandals? Yes, please! We want it! We want a theme to talk about
during the lunch break! We want a theme that we can be smart about! And here we
go...
Let’s look at the democracy. Greek guys in the very far away past have created this
term to empower nation to have power. Though they left the women out. But that’s a
completely different story. The gender issues luckily are changing for the better in some parts of the
world. But what about the democracy these days? Democracy in Europe seems to be more like
the right itself and in it’s whole awesomeness: the right to hold
peaceful demonstrations on the streets of capital cities, the right to work and
study in whichever country of your choice, the right to face discrimination in a liberal way and receive a certain amount of media coverage and the institutions
involved in all that if they’d like to hear your story and if they’d like to do something
about it, the right to vote, the right to join the organizations against
terrorism, the right to speak out loud and the right to know your consumer rights, the right to be heard, the right to do whatever on the Earth is judged or
considered as useful - the right to do anything. Yes, Europe kind of manages
its’ rights policies, greatly following the UN declaration of Human Rights (1949) that echoes strongly in the constitutions of the national governments. But
how about the rest of the world? The recent awakenings of Arab Spring show that people want changes, but is it the democracy they want? And if they’ll be
given one, will they actually be able to deal with the new
way of power distribution, if they were used to other types of ruling? And will they
choose the new political leader wisely? The religion in this case also comes close by as it
has it’s great importance, greater than the European one that seems more like a show-off on national holidays. This part of the world is certainly
ruled by the religion, which has to be taken into consideration.
So who’s ruling globally? The
newspaper still says the same, it's the same Giants, though at the same time the newspaper promotes unobtrusively that it might be profitable to have
good relations with China, despite the fact that it’s not so capitalism-friendly country. “Merkozy”
duet is continuing to solve financial problems of the Union they feel
responsibility for. However, it won’t help Greece a lot, acknowledging its’ common problem called 'corruption disease' that has planted its roots in the government long before the things went bad. Meanwhile in the countries with a weaker political impact on global decisions, the nationalism rises steadily and
persistently. For example, Latvia - an Eastern European country, which has the
most Russian speaking nations in Baltic states [more than 40 % of the population] and which could easily be friendly with their Latvian neighbors,
now seem to have started a more direct political activity against, for example, by the initiation of the referendum that would, if gathered enough votes, provide the Russian
language a status of a second official language of Latvia. Of course this
trial failed. But the political battle is still going on - between the
political parties mostly. Where all the efforts of integration made in the past 20 years
went? Nowhere. Just disappeared. But the disintegration within the society is made
and it continues to progress. However, it’s hard to imagine that a neighbor will
go against his/her neighbor. Possibly that will be his right, since Europe is all
about rights. If you have rights, use them! The nationalism together with
strengthening of national identities goes well together, although the Union's idea was about accepting diversity and living happily ever after in this
multi-cultural society. Nonetheless, more and more ''some animals are more equal than
other”[G.Orwell]. That’s where the meaning of your own roots becomes more
important than other, causing the creation of certain social groups fighting
either peacefully or aggressively for the rights and values they think they
deserve, but don’t have them yet. I bet people in France with darker skin and
African origin are still facing a lot of discrimination in the job market. Also the last year’s riots in London didn't really show a good example of being
nationally united. So it seems that a lot of seemingly stable icons are starting to
shake. Are there any solutions one would ask?
While looking for the answers the newspaper is done for today... Challenges identified: money, rights, raising nationalism, religion versus
democracy,and again money, money, money...
Thinking piece sent within the application to Amsterdam Summer University 2012 "Understanding the Political Science". Didn't go through, but still - some creative thought was left there. April 2012
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