So … we’ve cast our votes and elected our representatives. It seems all the parties have pre-rehearsed excuses as to why they didn’t do quite as well as expected and particularly why their opponents did so much better. We’ve heard it all before – it’s the stuff of politics.
What really disappointed me – again – was the low turnout. They reckon about 36% of the electorate turned out to vote and friends tell me that’s quite good. “Quite good?” So, 64% of us had a really good excuse for not strolling down to the local Polling Station and expending the enormous effort of picking up a piece of paper, writing two intersecting pencil lines on it and putting it in a black box? Take out the housebound and the infirm and a smattering of conscientious anarchists and you still have over half the eligible population not voting. Well … shame on us all!
I am getting increasingly worried (along with a few other Victor Meldrews, no doubt) by the widening gap that exists between rights and responsibilities nowadays. To put it more bluntly, I think too many of us are just too darn lazy! When we can’t be bothered to change the TV channel because our arm is not long enough to reach the remote, it is hardly surprising that we can’t be bothered to care about one another or the state of our communities or the moral choices of our society.
Perhaps the only thing that still has the power to tip us out of our armchairs is the thought that our rights might have been infringed; that something which we were entitled to had been withheld from us. Like free education, medical and hospital care, police protection and a state in which we have every right to say what we think of the government without incarceration. Funnily enough, the very things we had the opportunity to vote for but chose not to!
Perhaps we might start a scheme where participation in the rights and privileges of citizenship is only available to those who choose to use their vote. Maybe we should begin excluding those members of our society who can’t be bothered to engage in the system that governs and protects their lives. Because if we continually ignore our electoral responsibility, such unpalatable scenarios may happen anyway!
Our choices reflect our character. Please pray with me that we make the right ones.
