Democracy has many symbols and gestures. Democracy is being able to exercise with responsibility the freedoms and rights that all people must have: to a dignified life, to a language, to education, to opinion, to free expression, etc., and to decide the form of government, the leaders and the future of their country, their community, their city or their town. Perhaps the most appropriate symbol of democracy, therefore, is the ballot box, which citizens use to exercise democracy, voting freely and peacefully in this box or space of freedom where votes are deposited.
Everyone’s ideas, opinions, decisions and future are in our hands, in an act of opining and deciding that makes us all equal: in the act of voting, and even in the decision not to do so. A ballot box is never a weapon; a voting hand is a hand busy in expressing its criterion and its will. That is why we have chosen this gesture, a gesture of peace and freedom of expression: the hand of a citizen exercising their right. And for this reason, any action against the use of the ballot box usually turns into an anti-democratic and totalitarian act.
Carles McCragh
President of LiberPress