Former president José María Aznar has called on citizens to take responsibility to defend liberal democracy, which in his opinion is in grave danger from the attack of the “detestable” right- and left-wing populisms. In his speech at the IX Ibero-American Congress of CEAPI, held in Mexico City, Aznar emphasized that “if there are responsible citizens” capable of speaking and acting “then liberal democracies will resist and freedom will triumph again.” He was not more explicit, although the message is very similar to the “whoever can, should” phrase he himself revived yesterday in a video, referring to the investigation opened against former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
Aznar defended liberal democracy today in Mexico as the best political system, the one that guarantees progress and stability, but he stressed its fragility in the face of attacks from outside and inside. In his opinion, however, “if there are responsible citizens who are capable of speaking, who are capable of saying, who are capable of being concerned, of not considering normal what cannot be considered normal, then liberal democracies will resist and freedom will triumph again. And that is what we have to trust in, but that is also what we have to do.”
“It is the civic responsibility that we all have,” the former president insisted before the Spanish and Ibero-American businessmen present at the congress. Emphasizing this idea, Aznar pointed out that “citizens are not called to responsibility in the Chinese dictatorship or in the Russian dictatorship, nor in the Korean dictatorship or in the Iranian dictatorship. We do have that obligation because it is the basic concept on which our coexistence is founded: responsible citizenship. And that, based on and grounded in freedom, must be our great hope.”
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Along those lines, he argued that one should not fall into the trap of “considering populism something normal, something desirable or something positive. It is detestable, on the right and on the left. And that is why, those of us who defend freedom and want freedom, defend that it is liberal democracy that we have to recover in its fullest sense and in its greatest splendor.”
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Aznar also referred to the current complicated geopolitical situation with tension in the Middle East, and admitted that he sees a difficult way out of the conflict. “As things stand,” he said, “the ways out are very difficult, very narrow, very small, and they can produce very serious consequences from the point of view of security and stability in the world.” All this, ultimately, threatens to further weaken the system of liberal democracies, according to the former PP president.
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