The Dialog in Dark Times

Teresa Freixes

The Constitution, by establishing a political system of representative democracy, builds an inseparable link between institutions and citizenship. Without the citizenship that chooses them, the institutions do not exist. And citizenship is governed from the chosen institutions. 

The Constitution configures political parties as the instruments that allow expressing the pluralism present in society with the aim of contributing to the formation of the popular will and, therefore, to institutions. Therefore, in democracy, its internal structure and functioning must be democratic. 

Institutions, parties and citizenship constitute, then, the three pillars in which the democratic building is held and, so that this building does not fall, all citizens and public authorities are subject to the Constitution and the rest of the legal system. 

But it happens that, at present, the building wobbles. There are institutions that, taken by certain political parties, do not respond to the needs of citizens. The rule of majority is interpreted in a mechanical way, fundamental for the formation of parliaments and governments (national, regional and local), when the constitutional expression of political pluralism imposes that all options, democratically expressed and exercised, must be respected and not only those that a mechanical majority derives in institutionally dominant. 

When the latter happens, there is no alternative but to resort to what constitutionally is determined to ensure the restoration of constitutional order and the Constitution requires, in addition to the dialogue intrinsic to any democracy, respect for the law that is the foundation. This leads us to examine what can be understood by dialogue and what is the respect of the law in democracy.

Dialogue, in the constitutional framework, because there is no other framework in the current democratic states, involves the interaction not only between the political forces present in the institutions but also with the citizenship that has contributed to forming them. Enlightened despotism, the whole for the people but without the people could be a useful motto in certain historical periods, but declined as universal suffrage was generalized, where each person had a vote, with the same value, through which pluralism was expressed and institutions could be shaped. And, in this context, all the votes must be the same and, therefore, all the political options present in the institutions must be able to shape this dialogue. It is not good to talk only with those who suit us, but it is necessary to take into account the whole. Another thing would turn the political system into a system of semantic democracy, in which democracy would apparently exist but which, in practice, only certain options would have real options to participate in the dialogue. Nobody is alien to the constitutional debate in democracy. And much less those who have the constitutional mission to be guarantors of it. I am referring, therefore, to the inexcusable role that the Crown must fulfill in this respect, as well as to the inexcusable guarantee of the participatory process for all political forces in determining the solutions that must be found for conflicts. There are no sanitary cords or exclusive agreements. Only the one who excludes himself, by rejecting the constitutional order, is left out, by his own decision, of the democratic decision making. 

But it is not enough that the institutions, the political forces present in them, take agreements in any way and without the citizens having elements of understanding about what was agreed. Agreements, agreements, in democracies, must be able to be assumed by the sovereign, that is, by the people. Because political forces, especially when acting outside these basic principles of the participatory process that ensure the connection with citizenship, may be tempted to make "pacts on top" that will be rejected as soon as they are known "from below".

The dialogue is complicated. Especially when the parties do not have the same concept about it. That is why it is necessary that what is discussed be known, procedurally and substantively, from the beginning, by the recipient of that dialogue, which is not another, make no mistake, political gentlemen, that the citizens who have chosen and paid them, religiously, with the effort of their work. The dark times that we are going through demand an effort in clarity, they demand a democratic practice that legitimizes the institutions. You are the ladies and gentlemen of politics, responsible for guaranteeing democratic coexistence.