Are education bill protests pointless?
Obviously the threat being reiterated by university professors and the militant representatives of student unions – namely that the new education bill «will not pass» and «will not be enforced in universities» – is unlikely to yield any concrete results. It is only logical that current protest action will continue a while longer, for a couple more «dynamic» demonstrations and rallies to take place and perhaps even for legal suits to be lodged with national and European courts by university staff. But eventually the law will be enforced or, to be more precise, it will be officially valid. Protesters’ regularly voiced convictions – that the law’s enforcement will be prevented – are hardly acceptable in a parliamentary democracy. Having said that, this democracy has witnessed its fair share of laws that are unfair, biased and serve vested interests – a violation of social equality. But the abolition or replacement of these laws with fairer and more logical ones was not brought about through some kind of coup or uprising but through democratic procedures. In other words, these laws were substituted with new laws introduced by the same government (due to practical problems posed by the previous law) or by a new government aiming to make up for prior errors and injustices. Demonstrations and other forms of protest action aimed at sensitizing citizens, social groups, political parties, even the government itself, to the unfairness of certain laws, are acceptable within a democratic regime. What is inconceivable is when certain individuals maintain that a law which has been approved in Parliament should not be enforced. Laws are voted through Parliament so that they can be enforced, and if they turn out to be bad – either by accident or intentionally – they can be amended or abolished through existing democratic procedures and on the basis of a majority vote. But this principle – that laws are approved to be enforced – is only of theoretical value in this country. According to a popular joke that first circulated decades ago, all Greece has to do is pass a law that imposes the enforcement of all its other laws (that exist on paper but are not applied). With such a sad record, it is no wonder that certain groups of individuals threaten to ignore the legality and rules of our democracy. Seen from this point of view, one may counter that university professors and students have every right to highlight «illegalities» – especially when political parties declare that they will «abolish» international agreements and pacts when they come to power, thus annihilating any sense of state continuity and consistency.
