is Belgium ready to manage the social consequences?
An opinion of Gérard Van Roye, citizen, engineer, holder of an MBA from Columbia and a master’s degree in philosophy.
Two recent polls begin with what young people think about how our democracy works. In France: a majority of them consider it positive “to have at the head of the country a leader who does not have to deal with Parliament and the elections” (1). In Belgium, a similar one confirmed that close to the young of the young people questioned think that “society would be better polled if power were concentrated in the hands of a single leader” (2). We cannot express more clearly the discredit enjoyed by the political classes of our democratic countries.
Inaudible tirades
Politics must be a spectacle, a theater which has encountered confrontations of ideas on stage. But we know, in Belgium, there are too many actors on the boards, to such an extent that the tirades become inaudible, except for the simplistic “little sentences” whose political utility is marginal. So let’s forget for a moment the creation of parties and the slogans of their affiliates for us on the concrete achievements of the legacy bequeathed by the political class.
No need to question political scientists to measure for how many years the following programs have been on the bill in our country: reform of institutions, pensions, taxation, technical and vocational education, the situation of young people from immigration, as well as nuclear, RER, wearing the veil, etc. Not to mention the climate or biodiversity. Do you see a single one of the key chapters of our living together that has been treated convincingly, and cannot say: “We come out with our heads held high and our children proud of us”? With such results, the boss of a private company would have been fired a long time ago. Fortunately, we live in a country which concentrates an enormous potential of wealth, knowledge and know-how, which somehow compensates for the failings of the state, while managing to maintain a certain political lethargy among the citizens.
What to do ? The RTBF had the good idea to organize a debate on democracy during a television program which brought together some politicians and citizens from all walks of life (3). As it should be, the elected guests have no great difficulty in refuting most of the proposals selected by the organizers of the show and defended by the public. Among these proposals: the popular referendum, the remuneration of parliamentarians, the number of terms of office, citizens’ assemblies, the usefulness of the provinces, themes which all have a good taste for populism …
The elect we deserve
The program certainly missed the point: how to promote the art of building compromises among our rulers from which the decisions that matter will emerge. Developing a compromise does not mean filling the government’s caddy with scoops proudly haggled by each party. There is a literature devoted to democracy, which shows that it is more than simply placing a vote in a ballot box. This would be forgetting the role of associations, the press, unions, etc. We understand that politics is the art of the possible, and also that we have the elected officials that we deserve, but we cannot help thinking that the political class and the parties bear an overwhelming responsibility for the discredit they enjoy. Our ministers sometimes declare themselves to be good managers, but we say that they are cruelly true statesmen. Should we wait until the assemblies are populated mainly by women, as in Iceland?
History teaches us that the shift from a democratic system to an authoritarian regime, as young people seem to want, often hangs by a thread in times of upheaval. And it is precisely a disaster scenario that we focus on the climate and biodiversity that we mistreat happily. The disruption which is looming more and more clearly, with a “very high level of confidence” to paraphrase the IPCC, is a major social earthquake, of which we do not seem to take the full measure. With us the warning signs which are called “Vesdre” or “Covid” we have already felt their share of suffering and debts. We can reasonably bet, without being too pessimistic, that the current climate objectives will never be reached, because it is easier to hide behind hypothetical technological innovations and promises in ten or fifteen years, than to put our hands in the sludge.
Slogans
Will we be replaying the lamentable scenario of an exit from coal and steel, which Wallonia is still not recovering from? Slogans, such as free public transport, for example, that we are being thrown like hens, are struggling to convince us that the political class has finally understood the importance of the current issues.
How not to be ashamed to see Belgium appear at a COP on the climate without any program, or only with a few ideas cobbled together at the last moment, without national cohesion?
The old worn-out political scenarios are no longer successful and cannot counter the rise in inequalities. If we can only offer our children a hyper polluted and dangerously unstable land, let us at least show them that we are concerned about the effectiveness of the political institutions with which they will have to live. We must constantly admonish our representatives so that they bequeath another chosen one to posterity than their name engraved on a plaque at the entrance to the communal swimming pool of Trouillon-les-Bains.
(1) IFOP survey carried out in France in February among young people aged 18 to 30. Reviewed in Le Monde on October 7, 2021.
(2) Survey carried out by the Kantar Institute on behalf of RTBF in September 2021.
(3) Special QR program entitled Bye Bye la Démocratie, Wednesday October 6, 2021.