What A Presidential Hopeful Must Do To Sweep the Constitents Off Their Feet
Amantay Asilbek, Presidential Hopeful of Kazakhstan (telegraph.co.uk)
There are many things that a man can promise while campaigning for the highest office in his country, depending on the traditional specificity of the country in question and on the level of gullibility of the potential constituents.
Jean Marie Le Pen (ro.altermedia.info)
Thus, in the European civilized countries and on the Northern American continent there is not much margin for improvising on the marvels a presidential hopeful could forecast in case he became the president of the country.
Endless talks about economic figures that catch the attention of no one, political visions and party ideologies confronting in the Western Europe and Northern America in talk shows that bring the televisions that broadcast them to the brink of bankruptcy, have made it necessary for some countries, like Greece, Australia, Belgium, or Argentina, to institute the compulsory voting.
Honestly, who would care to see two guys who eyeball and shout at each other over the difference between 5% deficit versus 4.5% deficit? Would you? I surely wouldn’t.
That is how the low turnouts can be explained in countries of the European Union or U.S. and Canada. The state works like a machine and the presence of this president or that makes no much of a difference.
Still, even in consolidated democracies like the ones in Europe or Northern America some presidential hopeful feel the need to touch a soft spot to raise the interest of their constituents to the point of convincing them to sacrifice a family barbecue for a trip to the poll station.
The most frequent item used by presidential candidates whenever they want to impress their voters is in Western Europe the policy toward migration.
Jorg Heider (agitprop.typepad.com)
Migration is the most pressing problem in a civilization where people reached a certain degree of citizenship and have a standard of ethical and moral conduct in society.
On the other hand, most people that leave their countries to find a better life in Western Europe are from countries where democracy is either inexistent or in a form of travesty.
This is how candidates like Jean Marie Le Pen and the late Jorg Heider, Chancellor hopeful in Austria, convinced many people to vote for them. They never became president or chancellor but EU had to impose some international sanctions on Austria to get rid of Heider.
In the United States George Bush won a second term unleashing the dogs of war in the name of the fighting against terrorism. By the time he left office Bin Laden was living undisturbed wherever he was living, which can not be said about the millions of Iraqis whose country was turned to the stone age in the name of some WMDs that didn’t even exist.
The more people are educated and know their rights the less possible it is for the candidates to lie to them.
George Bush (globalresearch.ca)
What happens though in a place where civilian rights are not so thoroughly observed and other mechanisms can step in and make the difference.
If we move to the Eastern Europe, situation gets a little rougher, because these countries are a compound of many nations living within the same borders.
Therefore, promising a “paradise” of “pure race” can swirl many minds into voting different characters that prove to be more of talkers than doers (thank God for that!).
Nationalistic rhetoric kept Slovakia at the door of EU for many years, and Croatia even now. The same caused Serbia to be bombed in 1999 in one of the most shameful moments in the contemporary history of the continent, brought Ukraine on the brink of partition and gave the chills to many Romanian citizens as a radical nationalist went in the runoffs of 2000.
Some countries in the East of Europe are very corrupted, considering that they have been run under the Gorbachev glasnost’ and perestroika, that is a “renewal” and a “rebuilding” of Communist elite, which turned into “democratic” leaders, with “views” and “visions,” paving their way to the upper crust with shady co-operations with the state, which practically entrusted them with the public wealth, “of the people,” as the Communist used to call it.
Traian Basescu (stiripeblog.wordpress.com)
In a society like this, the delusion of eradicating corruption works like a charm for a presidential hopeful.
Most of the candidates promise to send to jail corrupt people, even though it is not in the job description of the office they run for, not to mention that the corrupt people in question are in many cases financing their campaign.
When it comes to sheer empty promises, Romanian president Traian Basescu is actually a miracle worker.
He succeeded in convincing his constituents to vote him in office a second time, after a first term of endless scandal and political turmoil, not to mention an impeachment procedure, that should have left him with no chance whatsoever to win.
He won by a very small and disputable margin, and started a second term with starving his nation by cutting salaries by 25% and killing all enterprise activity in the field of small businesses by ripping off the citizens by idiotic taxes. He is looking at the prospect of being impeached again.
Yulia Timoshenko (karadeniz-press.ro)
Basescu’s show performed in the neighboring Ukraine did not impress (enough) the people, causing presidential hopeful Yulia Timoshenko lose elections and be on the brink of losing freedom as well.
Speaking of Romania, there was a moment in a presidential campaign when a candidate called Constantin Mudava was promising the voters to heal the whole nation by means of bio-energy.
Presidential candidates can lie about almost anything to get elected: they can promise to make people richer, or poorer, happier or sadder, their countries greater or smaller, and so on.
However, there is a case happening these days, where a presidential hopeful breaks all the records known to campaign policies, by his appearance and especially by his message.
Amantay Asilbek, 70, is running for the supreme office of the ex-Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, a large country in Central Asia, full of oil and gas resources, run until now by Nursultan Nazarbayev, a very enduring leader who kept office since the moment of the formation of the new state back in the 1990s.
Asilbek campaigns dressed like a Mongol khan, with a speech that reminds of old Sugotai and Kublai khan, though his offer is very actual, sort of speak.
Thus, he promises to solve the problem of female solitude in his huge country, if elected president.
He thinks that one of the most efficient solutions would be to accept polygamy. He says that in spite of his age, many young women come to his house to become his wives, but they do not pass the “quality test” of his first wife.
It is not the first time that Amantay Asilbek is running for presidency. He was rejected in 1998, but was admitted in 2005, without a chance to win many votes.
Even now, he is expected to fail the test on Khazakh language proficiency, a test that has already disqualified three out of five potential candidates.
For the sake of the Kazakh ladies that need a good husband in their lives I hope the Khan-like presidential candidate speaks the official language well. As for the 90,000 signatures needed, does anyone doubt that he will get them manifold over?
