Editorial To Vima: A toxic clash

No one can expect the public political dialogue to be an exchange of niceties, especially just a few months before the next general election, nor does one expect a tepid and hollow clash.

Yet, there is a huge difference between the tenor of an election in prosperous and blissful Switzerland and the gutter of toxicity that we see around us.

We can all understand a clash that is clear, but with boundaries, maybe harsh but with a sense of a higher interest, which is neither limited nor defined by the desires of one party or one leader.

What do we see? We witness attacks, innuendo, various unanswered questions and others posed in bad faith, ostensible skirmishes, poisonous implications, and irresponsible characterisations.

The recent debate in Parliament over draft legislation governing the operation of the National Intelligence Service (EYP) was, to say the least, not one of the brighter pages of Greek parliamentarism.

There were serious reasons for the debate to have been conducted differently.

For better or for worse, EYP is a basic pillar of the system of national security.

Everyone would expect MPs, who constitutionally represent the nation, to discuss national security with lucidity, knowledge, and calmness, and not shrieks, innuendo, and gesticulation.

One would expect them to hold a discussion grounded in defensive deterrence, and not partisan bravado.

In the final analysis, real foreign threats are not interested if we need two prosecutors or an entire judicial council to get the job done [approve surveillance].

What, then, will be our course toward elections?

On one side, we have a government fortified in its dominance.

On the other side, there is an active opposition that is prepared to use every means at any cost so as to have a chance to jump back into the game.

Elections, however, are de facto a process with winners and losers.

Democracy is grounded in the co-existence, if not the cooperation, of the victors and the defeated the day after the elections

Does anyone have the sense that the upcoming winners and losers are preparing for co-existence?

It is quite the opposite, if one judges by the shouting, the aphorisms, and the pervasive toxicity.

There are even rumours about disputing the electoral process.

Therefore, the danger is not to have winners and losers that will be chosen by the people, because that is how contemporary democracies work.

There is a danger that there will be only losers.

In that case it is democracy that will have been defeated.

I.K. Pretenteris