Art critic John Berger said that "every deep political protest is a call for an absent justice, and is accompanied by the hope that in the future that justice will be restored." That hope is practically the only thing left for those of us who have been suffering from the lack of dialogue on the part of those who have deprived the Cortes Generales of life, always relying on an unquestionable absolute majority, but currently unreal.
Many of us feel the impotence produced by the Government not listening to its own citizens, much less to the rest of the political representatives, and the uncomfortable feeling that there is no way within our reach to confront the abuses of power, except for the perspective of hope that the proximity of the next elections grants us.
In this endless legislature, the deputies and senators of the opposition, like the vast majority of citizens, protest because not doing so would be foolish and irresponsible, but the State Government repeatedly flees from dialogue, not showing its face or dodging the debate with empty excuses with which they try to justify themselves.
The bills pass through the Cortes Generales at an unprecedented speed, without a constructive debate of ideas, and without the Popular Party even accepting to listen or understand that there are alternative proposals to correct their errors or to enrich their objectives. And that maxim, the certainty that any proposal that is raised is going to be crushed by the PP majority, is what generates the most unease among those of us who do not give up on fulfilling our political obligations despite the irritating behavior of those who continue to believe that the citizens gave them a blank check in that autumn of 2011.
Despite the fact that all studies agree that citizens punish with their indifference those political structures that are not very sensitive to their interests, we are entering the last year of the legislature, after an ominous November 20 in which not even the popular ones dared to celebrate the third anniversary of their absolute majority, with the full conviction that everything will remain the same, that we will continue to witness the unbearable political vacuum that exists in the Chambers.
More than 95 percent of the initiatives that we who are not part of the popular group have raised have been flatly rejected, even in those cases in which we proposed in the same terms those policies that the Popular Party defended when it occupied the seats of the opposition. They have done so without hesitation, without any shame and without feeling the slightest regret for opposing what they themselves vehemently defended before their arrival at La Moncloa.
Between those who turned their backs on the citizens from the very moment they received the keys to the Moncloa Palace and those who today present themselves as the only option to put an end to the most dramatic political crisis we have experienced in our country, there are those of us who have always bet on dialogue, who have demonstrated a greater vision and commitment to the State than those who call themselves patriots, and who have always debated with the data in hand, with the reality present in our discourse, with the weaknesses and strengths, and without shying away from the thorns that always emerge when decisions must be made, some desirable and others unpopular.
The Popular Party demonstrated more ability to reach power than to govern. And three years after the promises he said he would fulfill have been left behind, he is now trying to reconcile with the citizens with offers that are even offensive, such as the 399 euros for the long-term unemployed. This forced strategy with a view to the elections is, in addition to a crude staging for partisan purposes, an offense to those whom the Government has condemned to ostracism in the name of the deficit and the payment of the debt.
There are only a few months left for citizens to go and exercise their right to vote, first in the municipal and regional elections, and then in the general elections, and the vast majority will do so with the full conviction that we have gone through the most disastrous stage of our democracy.
Ana Oramas, deputy of Coalición Canaria
