The Power of "NON"!

If you live in France – you may be getting a bit sick of the constant debates and discussions on the Treaty for a European Constitution in the media. It seems that everything has been said on the subject, and if you’re not informed at this stage, you must have spent the last few weeks in a cave, so shouldn’t we now stop debating and just wait for the vote on May 29? Yet to my great surprise, I continue to find more interesting things about the two sides. Well actually, I’ve been keener on trying to understand the “other side” – the “NON” side and the reason for their success in the polls.

Other than the political reasons commonly used by the “NON” side, they benefit from two things:

• First their power is based on two strong emotions: fear and/or anger - FEAR of the future, of the unknown and of "the other", and ANGER for everything going wrong - and there is absolutely no way to beat that. It’s no surprise that the “OUI” side should appear a bit lukewarm. Positive emotions do not play as well as negative ones – especially on TV, and unfortunately, the debate is much more about emotions such as fear and anger than about reasonable arguments and sound reflection.

• The other great thing that promotes the “NON” is people’s ignorance of the present European institutions and treaty. Most of what the “NON” has been complaining about – the enlargement of Union, or the free movement of people, goods and capital – are things that are already here now and that people voted for in the Referendum for the Maastricht Treaty. Very little in the debates is actually about the new things in this text to be voted. The blame should probably be put on people’s laziness, no doubt, but also on the media, on politicians [who have used the EU as an excuse for their lame policy], and on schools that have not taught Europe properly.

All that most certainly makes a lot of greedy politicians quite happy.