There's no other way to describe the turnout in last week's election to the European parliament. In Ireland 58% voted in the South and 51% in the North. Ordinarily, I'd describe these per centages as pathetic but, in light of the figures from some other parts pf the continent, Ireland looks like a star student.
Perhaps most shocking of all was the fact that the turnout in the new accession states of the east was actually worse than that in the veteran western states. In Poland, only a fifth off those who could have voted chose to do so. This is the same Poland whose membership of the European Union (EU) is measured not in years, or even in months, but in weeks. The same Poland which was, in the living memory of this young writer, a dictatorship.
I don't feel like getting into why so few Europeans chose to exercise their democratic rights last week. It's too large and complicated a subject to delve into. But suffice to say that this is a very serious problem for the EU. Within the space of a decade, voting has gone from being an activity in which four fifths of the population regularly engaged, into a minority interest. Where will it be in another ten years? Will it have become some obscure hobby like pigeon-fancying or train-spotting? Will people in 2014 say things like "In my free time I enjoy collecting stamps and voting"?
Enough of the bad news. Democracy may be in retreat in Europe but elsewhere in the world it is very much the coming force. The second annual march for democracy will be held in Hong Kong on July the 1st. Last year's protest against the policies of Beijing-appointed chief executive Tung Chee-Hwa drew a million of the territory's seven million residents onto the streets. To put this in perspective, it's the equivalent of forty million Americns marching on the same day about the same issue. This figure is all the more remarkable when one considers that Hong Kongers are not, to put it mildly, the most politically active of people.
The huge demonstration last year showed that democracy is far from irrelevant, no matter what happens in apathetic, old Europe. The simple idea that those who rule over us should have our consent to do so still resonates. It still brings people onto the streets, it still moves people.
The odds stacked gainst the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong are formidable, Beijing and its local lackeys will not let go easily. Still, one can only hope that the territory's people can strike a blow against a regime which holds one fifth of humanity down.
What's more, should the pro-democracy movement ever succeed in Hong Kong, one can only hope that the people there will not follow the Polish example and move quickly, oh so quickly, from franchisement to apathy.