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talkpoliticsGreetings, dear fellow procrastinators curious folks! See, you may've heard of preferential voting. A party puts a list of their ranked candidates, but the voters are given the opportunity to specifically name one of the candidates in the list as their preferred choice, which props this candidate up the ranks, and if a sufficient number of voters have made such a preference, the candidate gets chosen over those placed above them in the list. It's a pretty simple concept really, but the problem is, we here in the God-forgotten backwater of a corner that is the Balkans, haven't got the political culture and experience with that sort of system. So we've come up with our very own weird sort of outcomes as follows:
New preferential voting system raises eyebrows in Bulgaria’s European elections
"Fascination and even amusement were among reactions after indications that Bulgarians had used their new preferential voting option in the country’s May 25 European Parliament elections - in one case, apparently replacing Bulgarian Socialist Party list leader Sergei Stanishev with a hitherto-obscure 27-year-old Momchil Nekov who had been 15th on the candidate list."
Well, see, the problem is, the Socialist Party here (BSP, technically the heirs to the old Communist Party which used to rule the country for decades in Soviet times), mostly relies on old people and rural people of low census and lower education to sustain their vote on elections (that, and the rampant vote-buying throughout minority communities, which most parties practice, buying their votes off by granting them a bunch of meatballs and a little cash in return for their vote). And on this election, BSP were designated Ballot #15, which they duly advertised on their campaign ads. So, lots of old people who didn't have an idea what "preferential vote" means, apart from choosing the BSP ballot, also wrote "#15" on it, just in case. And this guy, who was 15th on BSP's list of candidates, suddenly beats all other Socialist candidates, and is sent to the EU parliament, just like that, by incident!
But the fun doesn't end there:
BSP's Momchil Nekov 'Pressured' to Renounce MEP Seat
Naturally, the Party pressured him to give way to the "establishment" politicians who were "supposed" to be BSP's representatives at the EU parliament. But... not so fast, comrades!
Momchil Nekov Will Take His Seat in the European Parliament
Suddenly realizing his "noble mission" as a champion of the youth generation in politics (official version), or rather, this golden opportunity to fill his pockets with lucrative cash from nice EMP salaries for the next 5 years (unofficial version), the guy has eventually chosen to stay on course, and go to Brussels. Hilarious situation ensues, as some Socialist MPs fiercely scratch their heads in dismay... And the media run interviews with the lucky guy, 24/7, some dubbing him "the face of the emerging youth generation in BG politics", while others simply having a shitload of giggles over it.
See, the preferential vote did actually appeal to a lot of voters on these EU elections (if we disregard the poor turnout anyway). But it also turned out completely useless for some of the establishment parties, especially those which are in a bad shape (like the ruling Socialists). Giving the preferential vote option to a party whose base largely consists of seniors and rural residents, is like dumping a ton of CDs with the last version of Microsoft Word to the doorstep of the pensioner club at Middleville-upon-Upper-Creek or something. Those folks would just load the CDs on wooden crates that they use for transporting eggs and potatoes, and stick them to the fences around their farms to shine and dangle in the sun and drive the blackbirds away from their precious crops.
The funny coincidence between the number on BSP's ballot and Mr Nekov's ranking spot within the BSP list has now launched the lucky lad straight into EU orbit. Now he's going to the European parliament without having ever realistically expected that he'd end up there. But let's not hurry to dismiss his skills as worthless just yet - it seems his sensational achievement is mostly due to a combination of two factors: 1) The already mentioned "just-in-case" voting of a large part of the Socialist base, who crossed off the same number twice (once by choosing Ballot #15, and once more, by writing "15" inside); and 2) The ridiculously high share of such "15/15" combinations in some particular minority communities, where the above-mentioned bribes in the form of meatballs and other small benefits had obviously been granted (a common practice here for the last years).
The triumph of a candidate whom no one had previously ever heard of, has reinforced the suspicions of a rigged and controlled vote, a tactic which BSP and the likes often like to ascribe to their opponents - but not this time! For example, the ballot protocols from some remote areas of Montana, the poorest north-western region in the country, show that the main recipients of such "heavily preferential" votes had been BSP itself, and their current coalition partners DPS (the ethnic Turkish party which is part of the larger Liberal Alliance of Europe). There were voting sections where, out of a total of 67 ballots for the Socialists, 33 had the "15/15" pattern on them. And those people had never heard of Nekov before! They don't have Facebook accounts and they don't use the Internet too often, so there's no way they could've learned of his existence in any way.
So in the end, this guy ended up with just over 30,000 preferential votes which had individually placed him over all the remaining list of Socialist candidates. And this is no coincidence. It's a symptom of a much larger problem, and not just the total lack of political culture in our society. It also shows the effects of years of efforts within the ruling Socialist party to uproot any dissent among its ranks, and the successful dumbing down of their electorate to a point where they're completely devoid of critical thinking (or any thinking at all). It's a well-known fact among the public that the Party has a practice of arranging vast lists of candidates on their party gatherings, where obedient activists who are prone to doing the bidding of the party elite are being propped up at the expense of dissenting minds with a proneness to talking too much and asking too many questions. So in the end, the party ends up with a mass of bleating sheep, individuals with dubious qualities whose only task is to stay loyal and uncritical to the party leadership, while being promised nice jobs in return, in case their party retains power on the next election.
It's paradoxical, but Nekov's election was the result of an unannounced but real internal campaign within the BSP, where with half a mouth they were advocating for the new preferential voting system (as a populist PR stunt), while in reality actively instructing their electorate to ignore the preferential element. A horde of emissaries sprang in all directions from the Party headquarters during the election campaign, explaining to their firm base how it was better to only vote for the Party without pointing to a preferred candidate, "just in case", lest something went wrong. Apparently they didn't trust their own electorate to either get in line or grasp the specifics of preferential voting. The obvious benefits of the preferential vote for the improvement of open democracy were deliberately omitted, so that the calculations of the cabinet could go just right without any glitches. Well, it didn't work, did it? Instead, stupidity prevailed among the electorate, and the otherwise meager 7-8% preferential vote for Nekov had a tremendous weight and re-arranged the party list, much to the dismay of the chief apparatchiks. If the party hadn't tried to discourage its voters from using their right of preferential vote, and had explained its benefits in a comprehensive way, surely the voters would've pointed to the more obvious front-runner candidates and wouldn't have sent this underdog to Brussels, would they not? So, the Party's own paranoia has backfired on them. Well done, commies! You've shown yet again your complete incompetence, since you can't even exploit democracy properly to your benefit. Haha! :-)
The funnier thing yet: the Party did fill the bottom of their list with all sorts of chaff, some unelectable candidates who happened to be activists here and there, or the heirs to famous party functionaries, under the pretext of "rejuvenating their ranks". In reality, they were doing their best to make sure that the establishment's monopoly on access to the positions of power would remain intact.
So if the election lottery had assigned, say, Ballot #12 to the party, perhaps Guy #12 on the list would've sprung on top, and that happens to be... wait for it... a 34 y.o. assistant to a professor at some obscure Technical university in the capital, who hasn't even completed his PhD in Automatics yet! What a marvelous EMP that would've made!
All that said, this result means a third consecutive electorial defeat for BSP's leader, Sergei Stanishev, who happens to be the chairman of the Party of the European Socialists. Hm... One'd have thought after such a thorough beating that his party has taken on the last few elections, he would've resigned a long time ago - but no. This isn't some civilized country where things happen that way. He has vowed to remain in place.
Meanwhile, Momchil Nekov, Mr Lucky Underdog, will now have 5 years in Brussels at his disposal to escape from his obscurity and make a name for himself, and prove worthy of the position. And who knows - maybe he'll turn out to be the voice of the ordinary people that he's so eagerly and conveniently pretending to be? At least one thing is for sure: he'll get his life sorted out after all those nice salaries that he'll take from our taxpayer money. If anything, the circus will go on, to our own amusement. It's a pretty costly circus I should say, so it better be entertaining!
The most ridiculous part in this whole debacle is how some elements from the internal opposition within the BSP are hasting to portray the young student in Political Sciences as some sort of standard-bearer of change, and a herald to the incoming new generation in the "Centenary Party". A standard-bearer he may well be, but it's a flag being devoid of symbol and content. It's just a random number. The only thing it symbolizes is the ineptitude of our so-called "political elites".
It's obvious that when a party is being run with negligence, it'll be running the country with the same negligence when it gets/holds to power. Unprincipled back-stage arrangements, personal scores being settled, secret deals, tits for tats, back-patting for dick-stroking, political inertia and irresolution, reliance on chance and luck - that's what has defined our rulers for a decade or more. It seems the leftist segment of our electorate has intuitively sensed this, because more than half of the firm Socialist base has refused to vote on these EU elections altogether, which is a sign that this government (which came after having tricked the center-right party that had won the previous parliamentary election and left them out of office, but has now suffered a heavy defeat to the same party), should finally go away.
But the most telling sign of the Party's ineptitude is the list of excuses they've been scrambling to dig up for their disgrace:
- The perfidious stab on the Party's back that former President and party member Georgi Parvanov committed when creating a splinter center-left project, thus stealing votes away from BSP;
- BSP not being assigned Ballot #1 on this election (bad luck, eh?), thus distracting people from the fact that Dear Leader Stanishev should've been unanimously elected the party's topmost representative - or so they say;
- These pesky Eurocentric topics that kept popping up everywhere during campaign time, and which the regular Socialist voter doesn't care about - what does it matter that this was an election for the European parliament? Duh.
- The notion among part of the leftist-leaning voters that the EU is some sort of rightist project, which means it's not worth wasting their time to support it by voting for it (WTF!? The various nationalist parties throughout Europe haven't shied away from competing by the established rules and entering the system in hope of dismantling it from within!)
- BSP's incapability of advertising the few successes this government has had for its rather short tenure;
- The passiveness of most local community leaders and organizers who didn't move a finger to stimulate people to go to the polling stations on election day;
- The above-described changes in the structure of the Party, which virtually decapitated entire branches of their organization, leaving them leaderless and incapable of winning elections.
It's a shock that no one has come up with other excuses such as election day (May 25) being the opening day of the fishing season, or the recent earthquake in the Aegean basin. Btw, that Greek earthquake was so strong it was felt over here as well, but it didn't seem to deter the Greeks from voting en masse, and even handing the victory to their left-wing party SYRIZA, go figure! Their voters were kind enough to specifically move from #6 to #4 the legendary chairlady of the Cleaners Union in Athens, Kostadinka Kuneva (an ethnic Bulgarian), while their counterparts at this side of the border sent a new EMP to Brussels, whose only credential is that it once occurred to his mind to advocate for raising a monument to the legendary Khan Tervel in Brussels. Part of the ballots for that guy were cast by poor miners who had been forcefully dragged to the ballot rooms by theirslavers employers, with promises of cheap meatballs and threats of throwing them on the street if they didn't vote as ordered.
Despite everything, even a cursory glance at the election results indicates that such sort of "misguided vote" didn't constitute much more than some 10% of the total number of preferential votes. Which shows that preferential voting is yet to be further developed, instead of being slayed in its infancy, as some knee-jerk partisan reactions seem to be suggesting.
* The title is a paraphrase of a popular BG comedy movie from commie times, "Favorite 13" which depicts the social mores of that time in a pretty hilarious way; on second thoughts, seems we haven't changed our ways that much since those times.
New preferential voting system raises eyebrows in Bulgaria’s European elections
"Fascination and even amusement were among reactions after indications that Bulgarians had used their new preferential voting option in the country’s May 25 European Parliament elections - in one case, apparently replacing Bulgarian Socialist Party list leader Sergei Stanishev with a hitherto-obscure 27-year-old Momchil Nekov who had been 15th on the candidate list."
Well, see, the problem is, the Socialist Party here (BSP, technically the heirs to the old Communist Party which used to rule the country for decades in Soviet times), mostly relies on old people and rural people of low census and lower education to sustain their vote on elections (that, and the rampant vote-buying throughout minority communities, which most parties practice, buying their votes off by granting them a bunch of meatballs and a little cash in return for their vote). And on this election, BSP were designated Ballot #15, which they duly advertised on their campaign ads. So, lots of old people who didn't have an idea what "preferential vote" means, apart from choosing the BSP ballot, also wrote "#15" on it, just in case. And this guy, who was 15th on BSP's list of candidates, suddenly beats all other Socialist candidates, and is sent to the EU parliament, just like that, by incident!
But the fun doesn't end there:
BSP's Momchil Nekov 'Pressured' to Renounce MEP Seat
Naturally, the Party pressured him to give way to the "establishment" politicians who were "supposed" to be BSP's representatives at the EU parliament. But... not so fast, comrades!
Momchil Nekov Will Take His Seat in the European Parliament
Suddenly realizing his "noble mission" as a champion of the youth generation in politics (official version), or rather, this golden opportunity to fill his pockets with lucrative cash from nice EMP salaries for the next 5 years (unofficial version), the guy has eventually chosen to stay on course, and go to Brussels. Hilarious situation ensues, as some Socialist MPs fiercely scratch their heads in dismay... And the media run interviews with the lucky guy, 24/7, some dubbing him "the face of the emerging youth generation in BG politics", while others simply having a shitload of giggles over it.
(Here, Bulgaria's newest and youngest EMP, seen partying hard. Drop the beat, yo!)
See, the preferential vote did actually appeal to a lot of voters on these EU elections (if we disregard the poor turnout anyway). But it also turned out completely useless for some of the establishment parties, especially those which are in a bad shape (like the ruling Socialists). Giving the preferential vote option to a party whose base largely consists of seniors and rural residents, is like dumping a ton of CDs with the last version of Microsoft Word to the doorstep of the pensioner club at Middleville-upon-Upper-Creek or something. Those folks would just load the CDs on wooden crates that they use for transporting eggs and potatoes, and stick them to the fences around their farms to shine and dangle in the sun and drive the blackbirds away from their precious crops.
The funny coincidence between the number on BSP's ballot and Mr Nekov's ranking spot within the BSP list has now launched the lucky lad straight into EU orbit. Now he's going to the European parliament without having ever realistically expected that he'd end up there. But let's not hurry to dismiss his skills as worthless just yet - it seems his sensational achievement is mostly due to a combination of two factors: 1) The already mentioned "just-in-case" voting of a large part of the Socialist base, who crossed off the same number twice (once by choosing Ballot #15, and once more, by writing "15" inside); and 2) The ridiculously high share of such "15/15" combinations in some particular minority communities, where the above-mentioned bribes in the form of meatballs and other small benefits had obviously been granted (a common practice here for the last years).
(Here, an actual politician, leader of a newly formed populist party, actually baking meatballs for the enlightened electorate - more likely as a humorous stunt in this case, but you do get the point)...
The triumph of a candidate whom no one had previously ever heard of, has reinforced the suspicions of a rigged and controlled vote, a tactic which BSP and the likes often like to ascribe to their opponents - but not this time! For example, the ballot protocols from some remote areas of Montana, the poorest north-western region in the country, show that the main recipients of such "heavily preferential" votes had been BSP itself, and their current coalition partners DPS (the ethnic Turkish party which is part of the larger Liberal Alliance of Europe). There were voting sections where, out of a total of 67 ballots for the Socialists, 33 had the "15/15" pattern on them. And those people had never heard of Nekov before! They don't have Facebook accounts and they don't use the Internet too often, so there's no way they could've learned of his existence in any way.
So in the end, this guy ended up with just over 30,000 preferential votes which had individually placed him over all the remaining list of Socialist candidates. And this is no coincidence. It's a symptom of a much larger problem, and not just the total lack of political culture in our society. It also shows the effects of years of efforts within the ruling Socialist party to uproot any dissent among its ranks, and the successful dumbing down of their electorate to a point where they're completely devoid of critical thinking (or any thinking at all). It's a well-known fact among the public that the Party has a practice of arranging vast lists of candidates on their party gatherings, where obedient activists who are prone to doing the bidding of the party elite are being propped up at the expense of dissenting minds with a proneness to talking too much and asking too many questions. So in the end, the party ends up with a mass of bleating sheep, individuals with dubious qualities whose only task is to stay loyal and uncritical to the party leadership, while being promised nice jobs in return, in case their party retains power on the next election.
It's paradoxical, but Nekov's election was the result of an unannounced but real internal campaign within the BSP, where with half a mouth they were advocating for the new preferential voting system (as a populist PR stunt), while in reality actively instructing their electorate to ignore the preferential element. A horde of emissaries sprang in all directions from the Party headquarters during the election campaign, explaining to their firm base how it was better to only vote for the Party without pointing to a preferred candidate, "just in case", lest something went wrong. Apparently they didn't trust their own electorate to either get in line or grasp the specifics of preferential voting. The obvious benefits of the preferential vote for the improvement of open democracy were deliberately omitted, so that the calculations of the cabinet could go just right without any glitches. Well, it didn't work, did it? Instead, stupidity prevailed among the electorate, and the otherwise meager 7-8% preferential vote for Nekov had a tremendous weight and re-arranged the party list, much to the dismay of the chief apparatchiks. If the party hadn't tried to discourage its voters from using their right of preferential vote, and had explained its benefits in a comprehensive way, surely the voters would've pointed to the more obvious front-runner candidates and wouldn't have sent this underdog to Brussels, would they not? So, the Party's own paranoia has backfired on them. Well done, commies! You've shown yet again your complete incompetence, since you can't even exploit democracy properly to your benefit. Haha! :-)
The funnier thing yet: the Party did fill the bottom of their list with all sorts of chaff, some unelectable candidates who happened to be activists here and there, or the heirs to famous party functionaries, under the pretext of "rejuvenating their ranks". In reality, they were doing their best to make sure that the establishment's monopoly on access to the positions of power would remain intact.
So if the election lottery had assigned, say, Ballot #12 to the party, perhaps Guy #12 on the list would've sprung on top, and that happens to be... wait for it... a 34 y.o. assistant to a professor at some obscure Technical university in the capital, who hasn't even completed his PhD in Automatics yet! What a marvelous EMP that would've made!
All that said, this result means a third consecutive electorial defeat for BSP's leader, Sergei Stanishev, who happens to be the chairman of the Party of the European Socialists. Hm... One'd have thought after such a thorough beating that his party has taken on the last few elections, he would've resigned a long time ago - but no. This isn't some civilized country where things happen that way. He has vowed to remain in place.
Meanwhile, Momchil Nekov, Mr Lucky Underdog, will now have 5 years in Brussels at his disposal to escape from his obscurity and make a name for himself, and prove worthy of the position. And who knows - maybe he'll turn out to be the voice of the ordinary people that he's so eagerly and conveniently pretending to be? At least one thing is for sure: he'll get his life sorted out after all those nice salaries that he'll take from our taxpayer money. If anything, the circus will go on, to our own amusement. It's a pretty costly circus I should say, so it better be entertaining!
The most ridiculous part in this whole debacle is how some elements from the internal opposition within the BSP are hasting to portray the young student in Political Sciences as some sort of standard-bearer of change, and a herald to the incoming new generation in the "Centenary Party". A standard-bearer he may well be, but it's a flag being devoid of symbol and content. It's just a random number. The only thing it symbolizes is the ineptitude of our so-called "political elites".
It's obvious that when a party is being run with negligence, it'll be running the country with the same negligence when it gets/holds to power. Unprincipled back-stage arrangements, personal scores being settled, secret deals, tits for tats, back-patting for dick-stroking, political inertia and irresolution, reliance on chance and luck - that's what has defined our rulers for a decade or more. It seems the leftist segment of our electorate has intuitively sensed this, because more than half of the firm Socialist base has refused to vote on these EU elections altogether, which is a sign that this government (which came after having tricked the center-right party that had won the previous parliamentary election and left them out of office, but has now suffered a heavy defeat to the same party), should finally go away.
But the most telling sign of the Party's ineptitude is the list of excuses they've been scrambling to dig up for their disgrace:
- The perfidious stab on the Party's back that former President and party member Georgi Parvanov committed when creating a splinter center-left project, thus stealing votes away from BSP;
- BSP not being assigned Ballot #1 on this election (bad luck, eh?), thus distracting people from the fact that Dear Leader Stanishev should've been unanimously elected the party's topmost representative - or so they say;
- These pesky Eurocentric topics that kept popping up everywhere during campaign time, and which the regular Socialist voter doesn't care about - what does it matter that this was an election for the European parliament? Duh.
- The notion among part of the leftist-leaning voters that the EU is some sort of rightist project, which means it's not worth wasting their time to support it by voting for it (WTF!? The various nationalist parties throughout Europe haven't shied away from competing by the established rules and entering the system in hope of dismantling it from within!)
- BSP's incapability of advertising the few successes this government has had for its rather short tenure;
- The passiveness of most local community leaders and organizers who didn't move a finger to stimulate people to go to the polling stations on election day;
- The above-described changes in the structure of the Party, which virtually decapitated entire branches of their organization, leaving them leaderless and incapable of winning elections.
It's a shock that no one has come up with other excuses such as election day (May 25) being the opening day of the fishing season, or the recent earthquake in the Aegean basin. Btw, that Greek earthquake was so strong it was felt over here as well, but it didn't seem to deter the Greeks from voting en masse, and even handing the victory to their left-wing party SYRIZA, go figure! Their voters were kind enough to specifically move from #6 to #4 the legendary chairlady of the Cleaners Union in Athens, Kostadinka Kuneva (an ethnic Bulgarian), while their counterparts at this side of the border sent a new EMP to Brussels, whose only credential is that it once occurred to his mind to advocate for raising a monument to the legendary Khan Tervel in Brussels. Part of the ballots for that guy were cast by poor miners who had been forcefully dragged to the ballot rooms by their
Yep, that's one of the symbols of these "European" elections that led to this minor debacle:
Despite everything, even a cursory glance at the election results indicates that such sort of "misguided vote" didn't constitute much more than some 10% of the total number of preferential votes. Which shows that preferential voting is yet to be further developed, instead of being slayed in its infancy, as some knee-jerk partisan reactions seem to be suggesting.
* The title is a paraphrase of a popular BG comedy movie from commie times, "Favorite 13" which depicts the social mores of that time in a pretty hilarious way; on second thoughts, seems we haven't changed our ways that much since those times.
(no subject)
Date: 2/6/14 19:34 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2/6/14 20:21 (UTC)Yeah been there at the receiving end of this. You're preaching to the choir in my case, bru.
The world is not such a diverse place in some respects, it seems. :-/
(no subject)
Date: 3/6/14 05:57 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 3/6/14 17:45 (UTC)Haha! =)
(no subject)
Date: 3/6/14 18:17 (UTC)