Protests in Europe

Dear Editor,

People matter and matter is always in motion.

In Europe, the United States of America, India and Israel people are peacefully protesting in numbers like never seen before.

In those parts of the world, save for India and Israel, as the autumn days shorten, and just as the leaves fall from the trees in the forests and the parks, in the same way, decades old and unacceptable ways of life are falling apart. Major cities in Europe transform themselves from mundane and routine office, business places and residences to spaces where people are protesting sometimes peacefully sometimes violently.

In the United States, it’s gas prices, cost-of-living, immigration, against war and mid-term elections; In Europe, it is cost of living, military conscription, cuts in education, against war and affordable housing; In India, it is changes to the voters’ electoral list; In Israel, it is the ultra-orthodox Jews against military conscription.

The popular protests are so obvious and visible to us who live far away from the global flashpoints that they are televised long enough to keep those with an interest in such matters following reputable and credible global news networks.

The protest demonstrations broke out like in a cosmic blink of an eye. Reports indicate that the standard of living of the working man, woman and student in France, Germany, Portugal, Belgium and Albania appeared as if it had stretched beyond endurance.

According to news reports, all manner of people including workers, farmers, intellectuals, artists, writers, women and pensioners, but more particularly, young people have taken to the streets to make their voices heard after, according to them, they were ignored and pushed back year after year by liberal democratic governments who failed to keep promises made at election campaign rallies and chose to serve the interests of the political and business elites and moneyed-class. On top of that, they opted to facilitate and protect corrupt officials.

Compounding the economic hardships and upsetting the daily lives of people are the lightning storms, flash floods, forest fires and torrential rain that have become more frequent and common place increasing pressure on unpopular governments, who victims claim, fail to act by bringing immediate relief to an already burdened populace.

For people in the countries where protest demonstrations are taking place, it appears as though life was like trudging on rugged terrain with no acceptable solutions in sight.

The populace including youth and students assert that drastic cuts in social services especially in education had become unbearable and were ‘killing’ them.

What became clear to them was that the cuts had to be opposed since they had become a drag on their academic pursuits and parental standard of living.

Observers say the uncertainty of the ideological and political direction of the protests were to be expected and cannot be predetermined. Their leadership, we are informed, will not only be of critical importance but a test to what the spontaneous or organized protests hold for the future of the peoples of the countries affected.

According to some analysts, organizers of the protests will have to come to terms with the fact that they may lose not only much of their material heritage but also the historic opportunity to bring about fundamental and long overdue economic, social and institutional reforms that they claim, is badly needed in democracies that have failed them.

European analysts suggest that those who may be leading the protests should take guidance from the Serbian student movement, which challenged the rule of a strongman who ruled the country for 14 years.^[1] The student movement won a parliamentary snap election outright.

The analysts further suggest that the Serbian example, novel in a number of ways, can give hope not only to the people of Serbia, who have collectively suffered long enough, but to all who have watched in fear as democratic standards and ideals erode across the globe

References

1. Inside the student movement that toppled Serbia’s strongman leaderwww.theparliamentmagazine.eu ↩