This newspaper’s tradition is to abstain from telling readers how to vote – which in no way means that we lack preferences or that we share the far too widespread opinion that all politicians are all the same. Whatever decision voters make when confronted with their thickly populated midterm ballots tomorrow will have its reasons – the current government has sins of the present, the main opposition has sins of the past while President Javier Milei should be the last person to say that there is no point in voting for third parties because he himself emerged from the previous midterms with just two deputies.
This newspaper is less reticent, however, when it comes to the question of whether to vote in the first place – a question apparently being asked by as much as two-thirds of a disenchanted electorate even if not all of them will be shunning their civic duty. A growing problem throughout this century but somehow it seems worse now. Undecided voters have long been a significant percentage in opinion polls but now they seem to be losing ground to those deciding whether to vote at all. This closing week of the campaign would seem to have been the quietest on record with a minimum of closing rallies, many of the leading candidates dodging debate or interviews, almost none of the classic party stands on street corners, vast swathes of this city without a campaign poster in sight and low intensity apart from the few seconds of breathless, incomprehensible television ads – even those seeking election seem to have lost interest while militants communicate via social network.
Electoral apathy can also be found in countries like Switzerland where public life is more or less under control but that is hardly the case here with crises in both the short and long term. But even when these crises do not meet with the indifference generated by political fatigue and uncertainty, the challenge does not find a response – the quality of public debate has deteriorated steeply, reduced to slogans seeking polarisation rather than solutions.
If crisis and opportunity are said to be the same word in Chinese (a cliché disputed by linguists), tomorrow’s election should be the chance of a lifetime – the current government was born out of the previous midterms. While previous attempts at recovery have only been frustrated, leaving the country fraught with uncertainty, not even trying only carries the certainty of failure. There is thus a vicious circle in play – the degradation of politics produces disillusionment but the resulting despair only makes the political system worse. New leaderships are never going to emerge without an electorate committed to change. Everybody blames the politicians but the citizenry is decisive – if people retreat into their comfort zones, a vacuum is created into which hard cores of fanatics are encouraged to move. Elections will continue but other democratic institutions will be eroded if such leaderships are the result – populism can also arise by default. There is such a thing as people having the governments they deserve.
Tomorrow the seats of 127 deputies and 24 senators will be renewed but any renewal in a broader sense will depend on civic participation. The current crop of candidates is largely a combination of what has been dismissively called the “caste” along with a mixture of opportunists, egomaniacs and eccentrics in the proliferation of lists – there are also some worthwhile leaders and competent officials but many have been discouraged by the disrepute into which the political vocation has fallen, joining the withdrawal of the citizenry in general. Renovation cannot come from the top down.
A lack of electoral enthusiasm also filters into other aspects of life. If John Maynard Keynes wrote of “animal spirits” as a driving force in economic life alongside more purely rational calculations, what hope is there of positive expectations when disenchantment and indifference taint democratic politics? Citizens who withhold their votes are also people who pull their dollars out of the monetary system and youths who move abroad. Implicit in the disappointment with politicians is the tendency to expect everything from the state instead of promoting private initiative.
This newspaper therefore urges the citizenry to go out and vote tomorrow, no matter how much poverty of choice they might perceive despite over 200 lists across the country. While the markets vote every day, the ordinary citizen should make the most of their one moment when they are sovereigns with everybody awaiting (and awaiting for some tense months now) their decision tomorrow.
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