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Alfredo Rodríguez Sedano, Professor of Sociology, University of Navarra, Spain

The hour of the political class

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 09:22:56 +0000 Published in Navarra Newspaper

After predictable results, the next step is to solve problems such as unemployment and youth unemployment. Politicians concerned about reality.

Of all the elections that have taken place in a democracy, it is safe to say that these have been the most predictable. It is enough to see how opinion polls predicted, time and again, the result that has finally been given.

The interpretations that can be given to the results of these elections are very varied. In most cases, these interpretations will be based on particular and partisan interests. It is enough to observe different analysts talking about the same reality and one comes out thinking that they are talking about different realities. Since we have had knowledge of the definitive data , there have been multiple opinions. The only thing they all agreed on was the overwhelming majority of the PP and the debacle of the PSOE.

But were these results really not expected? Can anyone in their right mind think that a country will not change course with the drift that employment, Economics and the unflattering outlook for the immediate future that we are facing of necessary adjustments and cuts, if we and future generations really want to move forward?

It is enough to follow the information to know that Spain is a de facto intervened country since a year and a half ago. It seems clear that if scientists strive to make the impossible possible, politicians strive to make the possible impossible. As Churchill pointed out, alternation fertilizes the soil of democracy. And he acutely warned that the politician becomes a statesman when he begins to think about the next generations and not the next elections. Let's hope so!

Well, this subject of politician is the one that society needs. That is what the citizens have voted for the most part: someone who cares about them, who has a true vocation as a politician, that is to say, someone who serves society and the common good. Someone who has the ability to look at the reality around him and see what are the real needs that society and citizens have, not the ones they pretend to have.

Ideologies are fine, but there is a reality that overflows them. And that reality is the one we have to look at: to achieve that five million unemployed people find a work that dignifies their lives, makes it possible to have and carry out a project.

That reality is manifested in the fact that more than 40% of young people have no possibility of accessing a first decent employment . Those young people who have to emigrate because the possibilities in this country have been Closed to them, with all the uprooting that entails. Those people who are the future of a society and with whom it is necessary to count on if a society really wants to move forward. This question, so hackneyed in speeches, is drowned by ideology.

What lesson can we draw from these elections? The urgent task entrusted to politicians is to refund hope to a citizenry that is disillusioned and lacking in its most basic needs. Hope is the only good common to all men; those who have lost everything still possess it.

And this task is not only for those who have been entrusted with the task of governing for the next four years. The call is that everyone has to work together, because that is what the citizens have order at the ballot box. And this task requires the cooperation of all, it does not know of absolute majorities, but that all political parties are committed to the same task. This is not the time for discordant voices that do not solve the real problems of citizens and society. Kennedy once told Americans to stop asking themselves what their country could do for them, and start asking themselves what they could do for their country. Well, the citizenry has spoken, which is what democracy allows them to do. The core topic now is that the political class , before this new opportunity that is offered, does not disappoint the citizens again and give them back the illusion that in many cases has been erased from their faces.