Democracy

The number of applications to volunteer as observers in the presidential election runoff on May 28 has exceeded 200,000, tripling the figure seen two weeks ago, a volunteer organization of election monitoring has said.

Greece is not Turkey. It is therefore a huge mistake for a party to adopt - even tacitly - outlandish conspiracy theories indicating that Sunday's election may be tampered with. Such issues have been resolved, once and for all, and no one has cast the faintest shadow of a doubt on any electoral contest since 1974.

"It is again confirmed that we do not know ourselves and that we take our fantasies for real," a Turkish friend wrote to me on Monday. It is difficult to feel just how much many Turks hoped that, at last, they would see an end to the slide towards greater autocracy and towards greater distance from the European Union. 

In other news, Polish parties try to outdo each other over child handouts; the media is in the headlines in Czechia; and Slovakia's new technocratic government gets to work.

The US Embassy in Greece and the Delphi Economic Forum, in collaboration with Art in Embassies, on Tuesday announced the Partners in Democracy initiative, scheduled for May 24 and 25 in Athens.

Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou will embark on a trip to Iceland on Monday to attend the 4th Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Council of Europe, scheduled to take place in Reykjavik from May 15 to May 17. 

President Tayyip Erdogan's opponents say they will repair the damage done to human rights during his rule, promising a new era for democracy and freedoms if he loses power in an election on Sunday.

In other news, the new Hungarian chief of defence staff puts military boot in mouth; more evidence emerges that object found in Polish forest was indeed a Russian cruise missile; and Czechs unveil draft legislation aimed at tightening protection for victims of domestic violence.

The political parties that will be taking part in Wednesday's live televised debate have set so many terms in order to appear that they have rendered a true exchange of ideas and opinions almost impossible to achieve. 

The bar is and needs to be kept high when it comes to matters of democracy and how our democracy functions. Every move that relates to the electoral process, to the workings of the justice system and to other such weighty affairs needs to be executed cautiously, within institutional confines and with confidence.