European elections
One week today the EU citizens go to the polls to elect the leaders who will see them through the next five-year term. These elections are highly important because of the serious threat to the continuation of the EU posed by the ultra right-wingers. These parties are springing up like mushrooms because people are dis-contented, unemployed and feel that the EU bureaucracy moves too slowly, has been ineffective in helping them to surface after the world economic crisis. This may well be the case, but it should be rectified from within the EU, not by turning our backs on an organism which has offered the best and most workable regime for the Europeans since the horrors of the Second World War. However, discontented people are easily manipulated. The extremists have to have an enemy, someone to fix the blame on and instead of placing their accusations on the EU politicians (which they also do, but to a lesser degree), they place them on the influx of refugees from principally Moslem nations, suffering souls who are crossing the Mediterranean in an attempt to find work and a future in other lands, fleeing from drought and famine, from cruel regimes and so many of them losing their lives in the process. The EU has always been a firm believer in human rights. We cannot listen to the Salvinis, the Orbans, the Brexiters, the Le Pens, the Trumps, who want to close us in hermetically, each within his petty little nation, each inside his own border. Borders - what a terrible word. All it conjures up for me are selfish protectionism, the exclusion of other human beings and insolidarity. Let's reflect on all this before we vote and let's vote for those who will do their best (imperfect as that may be) to open our minds and hearts, not only to immigrants, but also to the inequality in our societies where the rich get richer and the poor poorer, and let's vote for politicians, unlike Donald Trump, who know that they have a commitment too to save our environment, our planet.
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