They know the lies, the broken promises, the abandoned citizens’ assemblies, the insecurity, the police violence. But they do not equate democracy with a totalitarian regime.
They remember that, over the past 75 years, we have won rights; that, over the past 20 years, transparency has improved; that, over the past 10 years, corrupt leaders have fallen.
They see democracy not as a fixed painting—where everyone creates an ideal landscape in which only their own ideas deserve to be represented—but as a garden to be tended.
A garden nourished by crises, like soil enriched by storms. A garden that changes with the seasons and with the people who pass through it. A garden that achieves harmony only when everyone finds their place.
And the gardener of democracy knows this: democracy’s flaws are merely our own. We find the same failings in families, communities and political parties—even among those who preach democracy without ever practising it under their own roof.
The democratic garden resembles its gardeners.
Yet, instead of demanding of ourselves what we demand of democracy, we prefer shortcuts: hollow speeches, form over substance, division over unity.
We become anti-establishment, anti-elite, and dream of a democracy that would improve without us, carried forward by a providential saviour—while we remain spectators.
Like adolescents refusing to become adults, convinced that a snap of the fingers will bend reality to their will.
But a garden left untended eventually yields to the law of the strongest.
Tending democracy requires, like any living and shared garden, time, small steps, disagreements, attempts, failures, and this simple truth: we cannot impose our own desires on everyone.
For if we remain in the position of those who know, facing those who “understand nothing”; if we believe that stating a problem is enough to solve it; if we prefer to identify culprits rather than address causes, then yes: the efforts of our ancestors will fade away, and democracy will retreat.
But we can still reject the consumerism that numbs us, the social networks that manipulate us, the individualism that isolates us. We can breathe new life into this democratic garden that so many others, before us, cultivated through hardship.
We can become gardeners of democracy.
Now.
While there is still time.
