When democratic norms are eroded, minority rights curtailed or press freedom curtailed, it rarely happens overnight and even less often with a bang. They are often slow shifts. These changes leave us speechless, sometimes not yet beyond our pain threshold, and try our patience.

We wait and see. We hope it won’t get any worse. We think someone else will hopefully take care of it. This collective patience gives room to authoritarian tendencies.

Authoritarian tendencies are on the rise worldwide. Democratic culture, understood as the search for the largest possible majority, is being reduced to an ultimate electoral formalism.
Democracy thrives on engagement, vigilance and objection when boundaries are crossed. It requires being uncomfortable, standing up and speaking out – not tomorrow or next week, but at the moment of challenge.
Those who are too patient in critical times risk democracy fading away quietly while we wait. Patience may be a personal strength, but for democracy it is often the most dangerous form of apathy.

Patience erases democracy.