The other day, my colleague Yurii Hudymenko in the program Hate Night Show played quite an interesting trick on the presidential candidate of the social democratic party Serhii Kaplin. During the broadcast, he asked him to comment on some points of his program, but instead of Kaplin’s program, he read out some points of the Hitler’s party program. On the air, the candidate did not even notice this substitution and defended each point of the Nazi program as his own.
Of course, it is a great reason to laugh at the candidate – generally, in our current circumstances laughing at the candidates saves from madness. But it is a sort of an indicator – NO ONE READS THE ELECTORAL PROGRAMS.
Even those whose name is placed under or over the program, even those who defend their candidate fervently. Even those who are convinced in their opinion to vote for that candidate – no one. Yes, even I myself have not read the electoral programs until this year.
So how do we make our choice?
We have a candidate before our eyes with the needed messages put into his mouth by political strategists, those that people will eagerly buy without any doubts and regrets. The messages that will not entail additional questions and clarifications. The candidate comes into our world – on the radio, on the television, on the billboards, on the Internet and in the print press. Everything is clear – I will raise salaries, lower gas prices, overcome poverty, reduce the tax burden, end the war/bring peace. That means I stand for all good things and I am against all bad things. There is rarely any explanation enclosed as to the plan for achieving this. And note that half of these issues are beyond the competence of the president in our parliamentary-presidential republic.
But who will deal with it?! We choose nice, pleasant people, we choose those whose comment about the gas in some political show was sweeter, or whose post about the impoverishment or “half of varenyk” was more touching, or who made us laugh by his show, or simply those who are funny and “if they will not change anything – at least we’ll have a proper laugh.”
It is difficult to read programs, to get into their point. It is even more difficult and time-consuming to analyze them. It’s not human nature to complicate your life.
This year I’ve read the candidates’ political programs for the first time. I didn’t manage to read every single one – probably, I would need psychiatric help somewhere at the point of reading the 25th program of political blah-blah-blah. But I reviewed the programs of three main candidates. I haven’t made myself suffer like this since the time when I had to take my political science exam. Though, it is difficult to read only one candidate’s program because it is necessary to figure out and get through all these bureaucratic words, unbelievable half-page syntactic constructions. There are complicated sentences, where by 15th word it is hard to remember what was stated in the beginning, and there are a lot of mistakes (candidates don’t waste their money on editors). And the most difficult task is catching cockroaches.
And by cockroaches, I mean contradictions. This is when the candidate denies in the third point of the program the thing that was written in the first one, and when the point 5 negates the point 1, and he generally takes over the competence of the united municipal units heads and a few the school principal’s responsibilities in the point 7. And you do need some preparation before reading the program – you need to read the Constitution, preferably its last edition because it was twisted a lot of times. It is necessary to figure out the state system in the country, to understand what a “parliamentary-presidential republic” is and what is within the competences of the president, ministers, parliament, regional state administrations, district councils, united municipal units and, finally, the school principal. The preparation is difficult, I do not deny it, it requires a lot of free time and perseverance.
Not so long ago, I asked one political strategist why politicians write such complicated, twisted and often idiotic programs. Is it really impossible to formulate all those postulates clearly and reasonably? Why don’t they write “I will give everyone a kilogram of buckwheat once” instead of three paragraphs about the fight against impoverishment?
He laughed it off with a medical joke in which an experienced surgeon approaches a diligent intern and says: “They will throw you in jail, Pavlenko”, and the latter asks, puzzledly “Why?” “Your handwriting is not medical, you write too clearly.” It turned out that in politics writing too clearly is a sin as well. That’s right because then everyone can read the program and make a conscious choice, not imposed by manipulative pictures. And then, at the end of the term, everyone will be able to ask his favorite: “Where is my kilogram of buckwheat?”
Then the candidates will have to read their programs, and the competitors’ programs, and be responsible for everything that was written. Then it will not be possible to write “I will reduce gas prices by half” on the billboards, and guarantee non-interference in the market processes in general and in the price of gas in particular to the political partners from abroad. Clear promises always entail relevant questions and claims. And the voter will have to understand that what is written on the billboard is not a document, what is said on the air is not a document, what was published in the newspaper is not a document. The candidate has only one document – his electoral program. But lying in this document and not being aware of its contents may entail only incidental responsibility – the voter may not vote for him. But for this, the voter must read the program and understand that his candidate also knows his program and will not defend Hitler’s tenets as his own on the air.
Vicious circle… It is a vicious circle in which the relieved voters, so-called simple people, can choose anyone, as long as the picture is beautiful, and it is easy to buy the simplified, popular, funny messages.
Tatusya Bo