We have been asking ourselves the title question constantly for many years, erstwhile we regularly face elections to the Sejm, the Senate, the office of president or the local elections. The election run is celebrated as modern games, which primarily service the enjoyment of the fresh slogans of reptiles. The full cover – hundreds of billboards, election meetings, spots, hundreds of social media entries, interviews or picnics is no longer just a domain of major parliamentary campaigns, but it has become a regular bread besides for local elections, even in these smallest towns.
Public relations have become an essential and key aspect for candidates for self-government. It is simply a kind of novam, due to the fact that in many parts of Poland the erstwhile elections followed the rules: everyone knows everyone, so there are no secrets in our backyard. Meanwhile, fresh (refreshed?) electoral committees launched in the election lines, which presented a variety of candidates to local communities. Of course, it wouldn't be unusual if it wasn't for a willing modeling (almost on a copy/ paste basis) on past parliamentary elections, which full demonstrated the power of social media and the effectiveness of mobilization mobilized by the negativity of the youngest electorate. In this year's elections, the conventional and widely utilized grip, in addition to old-fashioned adversities and spite, has just become flashy and sensational social media entries that had 1 goal: – Escalating emotion, directing the recipient to a peculiar aspect outside the program, based most frequently on negation of not the program or postulates, but a peculiar candidate or committee.
Many candidates, since the "return of democracy" has been happily rejected, have based their profile on the slogan "holy democracy" which, according to them, is all upcoming election (at the same time, the countdown to Euro-elections and the election to the office of president of the Republic of Poland is ongoing). It is simply a positive, cheerful, youthful slogan, cool, but at the same time general and positioning a given committee as this "good" and "democratic" as opposed to an opponent who, from this position, can be cast with any negative-oriented invector. Of course, all these elections will be a "holy of democracy" as long as the city/powiat councils are given to "democrats", otherwise the spell of this "holy" will flow like a bubble of soap and "holy" will rapidly turn into a festival of discontent, suspicions of manipulation of the opposing camp or accusations of any percent of society for stupidity and manipulation.
But can the plebiscite nature of this year's elections truly be called "the feast of democracy"? Or are the games that have been taking place in front of our eyes almost since the beginning of this year? For many observers of political and social processes taking place in our country, this is simply a rhetorical question.
Conscious of its function and mature society can admit a valuable and worthy candidate's voice, but will it be so apparent in the flood of cool media candidates who approach (pato?) the celebrity character of their own image?
Paraphrasing Roman Dmowski, will we proceed to humanely sale out Poland? Will we put an end to this?
Bartosz Tomczak
