In the 60s of the last century, Bob Dylan composed two songs titled "The Times They Are a-Changin'" and "Blowin' in the Wind." Both are very suitable for the situation we are in. The times are changing and the answers to those changes are floating in the wind. The crisis, corruption, the 15M movement, the Podemos phenomenon, etc., are sufficient signs to penetrate even the most stubbornly closed noses.
Anyone, with an un-atrophied pituitary gland, perceives the smells that spread here and there and that do not blow like a breeze, but like a strong wind that can turn into a hurricane. But I fear that those who should perceive the aromas the most suffer from chronic sinusitis and do not capture them well, or do so in an interested and mistaken way.
I, humbly, am going to describe what the perfumes I perceive are. There are so many (popular sovereignty, educational reform, justice reform, end of corruption and impunity, competition, responsibility, transparency...), that they would need a book, but I will try to summarize them schematically in some articles.
The basic pillars of democratic regeneration for me are two: the recovery of sovereignty by the people and a profound reform of education. In this article I am going to talk about the first.
I have already written on other occasions that sovereignty does not belong to the people, although the constitution recognizes it as such. No, because the programs we vote for in the elections are not required to be fulfilled by law and because the consultations in a referendum, as far as I remember, have only been two: constitution and entry into NATO.
Thus, we find that politicians, by not assuming any responsibility for the fulfillment of the programs, can try to sell us a motorcycle in the campaign that they know does not exist. How is the problem solved? I understand that there are two ways: more direct democracy (frequent referendums on issues of real importance), and mandatory compliance with the programs, with a law that sanctions if it is not done.
As for direct democracy, I believe that we are increasingly close to being able to return to the Greek agora (logically not the same, but with the advances of 25 centuries). The new information and communication technologies are making it possible. I conceive the democracy of the future as the inversion of the pyramid of representative democracy. If now the people, who are the base, vote to elect representatives in whom they delegate political action; in the future, I understand that citizens will make the policy and the top will be mere administrators who will translate what has been agreed by all.
The best solution I know for the problems we have is more democracy. If it is cold and hungry in the trench, those who know it are those who live in it. The general staff, which is well fed and with heating, cannot possibly feel the same needs.
I copy the beginning of Bob Dylan's song "The Times They Are a-Changin'":
"Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone"
Since the times they are a-changin'
