Column_A WHITE CARD
Election, election and soon it’s over. And now: bitter happiness of PO (Civic Platform), bitter calmness of PiS (Law and Justice), a very green and undoubtedly four–leaf clover of PSL (Polish People's Party), despite the autumn, the third position of LiD (the Left and the Democrats) despite the interference of the Philippines into the inner matters of Aleksander Kwaśniewski's organism and the (4th) Polish Republic system, and – and this cheers me the most, although I have little to do with the teachings of JPII – two political coffins: a long and narrow one for Roman Giertych, and a much shorter and broader one for Andrzej Lepper.
José Saramago, a Portuguese writer awarded Nobel Prize in1998, very often in his books takes a closer look at how democracy works when something ceases to function properly, in other words, at how democracy sinks drawn by its own weight under non–standard circumstances or even in situations wrapped in metaphor. In fact, reality wrapped in metaphor doesn’t seem to be a very ‘standard’ one.
I’m not going to start the nutritious and lucrative hulling of beans but I will let myself pull out a few observations. I’ll begin by letting myself make a subjective and abbreviated selection from José Saramago’s works and life, with the emphasis on the first.
As Intermitências da Morte (a title as if from the French Kundera but, fortunately, the Portuguese writer would have much to learn in order to write equally pompous and unbearable prose as the "French" Kundera). In a democratic country, whose name isn’t mentioned, death suspends its activity. Nobody dies. The victims of car accidents, the terminally ill, naive and stupid – nobody dies. After the initial explosion of euphoria, the country changes gradually into a hospice. Hospitals are overcrowded. The relatives, who not long ago prayed for the lives of their (also) relatives, can't wait for their decease, which would shorten the agony and suffering. Insurance companies go bankrupt. The Catholic Church expresses anxiety, to say the least (in a nut shell: there's no death = there's no resurrection of the body = there's no Christ teaching = there's no Church = there's no lucrative employment for cardinals). The government ceases to exercise any real control over the citizens. It’s the same with the Church and its virtual control. In a word – chaos.
There is only one mechanism that functions quite well – the market. Mafia negotiates with the government, mafia takes the living dead abroad where they give out their last breath (beyond the boundaries of the upset country death works as if nothing happened). After some time this leads to international tensions as the neighbouring countries are not willing to become their neighbour’s cemetery.
Et cetera.
The City of the Blind (Ensaio sobre a Cegueira) (English translation title: Blindness isn’t literal). In a city of a country an epidemic of white blindness breaks out. Citizen after citizen is loosing sight. They are not plunged into darkness but into a blindingly white space. Colour doesn’t have any practical meaning. White or black – there is no way to see anything from behind the curtain of colour. Colour has a metaphorical meaning. We are used to thinking that whiteness (light) illuminates and blackness (darkness) hides. That's the way it is. It’s all crap because colours don't illuminate anything. Because if somebody can't see, they won't be able to see and it doesn't matter if their eyes were picked out with a spoon, burned out with a torch or their eye nerves where cut off in a traumatic crash or with a scalpel.
The epidemic is spreading more and more widely. The (democratic) government tries to quarantine the infected. The quarantine is becoming increasingly widespread since even the guards catch the illness. Finally, the whole country plunders into the white blindness.
Only one thing keeps functioning properly: the sight of a woman, the singular sight that helps her husband and their companions survive in the new reality.
Et cetera.
Seeing (Ensaio sobre a Lucidez) (following the path of literal title translations one may argue for The City of White Cards). In the city the reader knows already from Blindness, the citizens have an amazing way of using their election law. They throw empty (white) ballot cards to ballot boxes. More than 70% of the eligible to vote use and fulfil their democratic duty by not filling the cards in. The government is in dire straits, not knowing how to interpret such an anomaly which is perhaps possible to imagine and not exceeding the democratic order but yet impossible to be accepted?
Since the voting has undermined democracy, according to the government's interpretation, i.e. the citizens have carried out a coup; the government declares the martial law, just to begin with. Secondly, since the citizens have offended democracy, according to the government's interpretation, the government takes offence and authority representatives with the government itself at the head leave the city.
The government striving to put the blame on somebody and its subsequent nervous actions are in contrast with the calmness of the unruly city.
Et cetera.
Seeing is to me an anti–utopia and utopia at the same time. A utopia because it creates an ideal society, which is able to exercise their rights. There is no organisation standing behind the "white" voting only the common sense of every citizen, who being tired of (as we can deduce) politicians and politics (the relatively young Portuguese democracy is in many aspects similar to the Polish one) gives them a white card (meaning: a football red card). It’s an anti–utopia because the noble and spontaneous act of voting does not lead to the creation of a more just or happier society. The white card is, on the one hand, show of defiance, on the other hand, surrender in the face of democratic rules, which happen, as Kurt Vonnegut wrote, to make our choice a choice we don't have the slightest willingness to make. A choice between rotten eggs. And it's not funny anyway.
I don't know about any equally spectacular example form the world history but I'd like to mention two events that come to my mind, which have in common, beside other aspects, the use of pieces of clothing: gloves and panties.
Gloves. In the presidential election of 2002 the French had to make a difficult choice. The two who made it to the second round were Jacques Chirac, who the majority was tired of, and Jean–Marie Le Pen, the leader of the extreme rightist National Front. The French clenched their (proverbial) teeth and went to vote. Chirac won. The French voted in gloves to demonstrate their dissatisfaction or almost disgust. So, democracy really allows people to make a choice, although it often doesn't allow to choose from what the voters want. In a Polish nursery rhyme the donkey was given: oats in one through and hay in the other. The voters don't always find themselves in such a lucky position; sometimes they must choose the lesser evil. The term "the lesser evil", in many ways doubtful, surprisingly often turns out to be the crown of democracy. Somewhat shabby for a crown but there's nothing better.
Panties. This element of the textile world seems more optimistic than gloves. Panties do not only cover the abdomen, groin and buttocks, as you may learn from Wikipedia, but they may also oust an individual from power. „Panties for Peace” is an international campaign during which women send their underwear to diplomatic posts of Burma. In Asia there is a superstition that a contact with woman underwear deprives of power. After the bloody reaction of the Burma junta and after the murdering of, if one is to believe dissident sources, over two hundreds of protesters, woman panties from all around the world flowing to Burma embassies are a reminder of freedom and bring – parcel by parcel – the hope for a better future. Maybe panties will prove more successful than diplomats?
This process, which, with a tongue in cheek, can be called a transition from the ‘panties civilization’ to the ‘gloves civilization’, seems to be quite widespread. In the non–democratic panties civilization, democracy is perceived as good embodied and the land of happiness. And when this civilization finally gets what it wants, when everything around is happy and democratic, when the panties are back to their original place and not in the mailboxes, then after successive failures and disappointments the time comes to look for gloves.
And what next? I don't know. A blanket? A white card?
Ignacy Karpowicz
Translated by Anna Skrajna