| Let's give you a story. It's a rainy election day in a small country -- that can be my country, but could be also your country. And because of the rain until 4 o'clock in the afternoon, nobody went to the polling stations. But then the rain stopped, people went to vote. And when the votes had been counted, three-fourths of the people have voted with a blank ballot.
And the government and the opposition, they are simply paralyzed. Because you know what to do about protests. You know who to arrest, who to negotiate with. But what to do about people who are voting with a blank ballot? ... Basically they went to the ballot boxes to say that they have nobody to vote for.
This is the opening of a beautiful novel by José Saramago called Seeing. But in my view it very well captures part of the problem that we have with democracy in Europe these days. On one level nobody's questioning that democracy is the best form of government. Democracy is the only game in town. The problem is that many people start to believe that it is not a game worth playing." | 
