AEGEE Election Observation Training Review
Cristoforo Simonetta, participant of the AEGEE Election Observation Training (1-6 October 2015 in Köln, Germany), reflects on his experience.
Last week I participated in an intensive course for election observers. Despite being a student of International Relations, before this programme I did not know a lot about the topic. My knowledge was based just on what I was used to reading in newspapers. Instead there are so many aspects and when we think that democracy is a quite easy concept, in reality it is not. In fact there are so many perspectives and even the official definition we have seen can be considered as incomplete. Moreover I could realize what the problems of Italy are related to the right to vote. Without this course I wouldn’t know about the lack of transparency of private donations to political parties or about the question of the “majority bonus” for example. These two aspects show the effectiveness of the course. It can be even useful for students who are not strictly interested to this topic because they can learn how to be more responsible citizens. In fact unfortunately too often we underestimate our power to influence political choice through the vote.
Being more responsible can be helpful also to build an European identity. In fact through the debate we did in these days about the limits of democracy and the role of the observers we built relations between each other. Even though there were different ideas and different opinions, there was also mutual respect. The motto of European Union is “Unity in Diversity” and I believe that this course showed perfectly this founding principle an continental identity. It was not a simple occasion to do a cultural exchange like for example an Erasmus semester but it was an opportunity to discuss the groundwork of our society.
In conclusion, thanks to this training I could see democracy in a different way and realise that no country is perfect and every one should improve itself. This improvement is possible with the exchange of ideas and opinions in respect of each other. This is necessary especially in Europe where there is an increasing delegitimisation of the institutions and of the democracy itself. To rebuild the links between the politics and the society courses like that can play an important role and create also a network of friendship that go further than national borders. I deeply suggest to everybody to try to apply to the next events even if you are students of other subjects because at the end despite everything we live in democracies and the first step to change is understand how the process works. I can conclude with a wish for a good observation training as I had for the next year.