FLASH
Shkruar nga Denis Dyrnjaja
Voting does not mean blindly believing, it means not giving up, because a country that is silent loses its voice. And a people without a voice loses everything...
Today there were elections for 5 new mayors of the municipalities of Berat, Vlora, Tepelena, Cerrik and Mat. The news is not the result but the low turnout of around 18%. On this election day, the streets were quiet in these cities, as before a storm that will never come. The people, who once lined up with hope to vote, now stay at home, looking at the television screen like an airless window. Instead of the dynamics that a competition produces, a heavy silence is felt, a silence that is not peace, but surrender.
This is the most painful sight of a democracy, when the people no longer rise up to vote or oppose. When the ballot boxes are filled not with votes, but with emptiness. And in that emptiness, the government only hears its own voice.
It is not that people do not have reason to be angry. They have seen promises extinguished like candles in the wind, faces returning to power like shadows that even light cannot dispel. They have seen justice turned into a commodity, the state into property, and politics into a market. But when disappointment turns into silence, it ceases to be a protest and becomes a grave. And we are burying our democracy with every vote that is not cast.
Not voting is not an act of rebellion, it is an act of amnesia but also of agony. It is the forgetting of the sacrifices that built this right. It is the forgetting of those who voted secretly during the dictatorship, who risked their lives for a ballot that expressed not only choice but also freedom. And today, when we have a free vote, we have made it invalid with our carelessness or indifference.
If a people does not speak with their votes, someone else will speak on their behalf.
If the boxes are empty, someone will fill them, not with voices, but with numbers.
And if we hope that silence is a punishment for politicians, we are sorely mistaken, they love our silence. It is their oxygen. Because a people that does not vote, does not ask. And a people that does not ask, can be led into darkness.
Elections are not a celebration of politics, but a test of citizenship, and in this very important test we are failing consistently and profoundly. The ballot boxes are mirrors where we see the true face of this country, how much we complain and how little we act.
Voting does not mean blindly believing, it means not giving up, because a country that is silent loses its voice. And a people without a voice loses everything.
Lini një Përgjigje