Archives for June 14th, 2004

A poster for Glas Zensk (Female Voice), a party which took 1% of the vote.

Only one in five Slovenian voters bothered to cast a ballot in yesterday’s European Parliamentary Elections. The nightly news suggested that “bad weather” had something to do with the low turnout. Then again, when it’s sunny and bright you also hear that the “good weather” distracted people from voting. And since Slovenia generally boasts a strong voter turnout, I would guess that the real reason people didn’t show up was because they don’t give a damn.

I don’t blame them. Most Slovenes seem to understand the EU well enough to know that the Parliament is a minor player that meddles around in non-issues like animal welfare and consumer protection and can’t even initiate legislation. Even the decisions it’s allowed to decide on are supplied by the European Commission and then tempered by the Council of Ministers.

The great Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek once wrote:

It is a well-known fact that the Close the Door button in most elevators is a totally inoperative placebo, placed there just to give people the impression they are somehow contributing to the speed of the elevator journey—whereas in fact, when we push this button, the door closes in exactly the same time as when we simply pressed the floor button. This extreme case of fake participation is an appropriate metaphor for the role accorded citizens in our ‘postmodern’ political process.

At any rate, here’s what the seven Slovenes entering the European Parliament will receive:

* 4000 Euros/month (quadruple the average salary in Slovenia)
* 150,000 Euros/year for office expenses, which they are not obliged to account for
* Free flights home (they are reimbursed for full-price air travel even if they fly by budget airline)
(source)

Congrats to the winners. Hooray for the European Parliament.