(AP Photo / Antonio Calanni)
Editor's note:
Pedro Brieger is an Argentine journalist and sociologist, author of several books on international issues and contributor to publications in different countries.
He is a professor of Sociology at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA).
Director of Nodal, a portal dedicated to news from Latin America and the Caribbean.
He is a TV columnist on the Argentine channel C5N and on the program «En la frontera», on PúblicoTV (Spain) and on programs on the Argentine stations Radio10, La Red, La Tribu and LT9-Santa Fe. Throughout his career Brieger has won important awards for his informative work on Argentine radio and television.
His Twitter account is @PedroBriegerOk.
The ideas expressed in this column belong exclusively to the author.
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(CNN Spanish) -
In a recent referendum, Italy voted to reduce parliamentary representation in both houses.
There will no longer be 945 legislators but 600. A cut that does not seem significant at first glance, but that has political implications that go beyond the number.
The public voted for the Congress to be smaller, a way of questioning the traditional ways of doing politics.
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For years now, different voices have argued that there is a political "class" or "caste" differentiated from the rest of the population, as if it were a social class, despite the fact that its representatives usually come, precisely, from different social classes.
It is considered a privileged class, which benefits from high salaries and without attachment to the specific problems of the vast majority of the population.
It is very common to hear - in a rough generalization - that they fight over trifles in debates incomprehensible to the general public and charge high salaries.
The antipolitical discourse
The "antipolitical" discourse is not new and is also gaining acceptance due to the constant criticism from the media.
In times when everything seems like a show, it "sells" more a fight between representatives than, for example, a parliamentary job whose fruit is a scientific-technological development.
For years now, people without a party background have been involved in political affairs and make criticism of "politics" a flag to come to power.
As if they weren't tainted by politics itself.
They are the famous "outsiders", characters who enter politics carrying a prestige earned outside of it.
Just to mention a few cases we can mention the businessman and current president Donald Trump in the United States, the famous footballer and president of Liberia, George Weah, or the singer "Sweet Micky" (Michel Martelly) who became president of Haiti between 2011 and 2016.
Much of the discourse of the "outsider" seduces by the diatribes against what they call "old politics" and "partycracy."
It is true, there is still a political representation based on old parameters if one thinks that the system of political parties and parliaments have existed for some centuries in Europe, and this European model spread to the world.
It is worth wondering if the vote in Italy is just for anti-politics or if it will help to think about other forms of representation in parallel to the discredited parliamentary one.
Time will give us the answer.
