Vox populi, vox Dei

I am very fond of elections. There is something in the electoral process that makes me wanna pee, and boy oh boy, does it bring back childhood memories. Last Sunday was an Election Day for three Serbian municipalities: Kosjerić, Voždovac and Zemun.

Obviously, none of these municipalities are of particular importance to the Serbian democratic process: Zemun will be corruption ridden and graffiti sprayed no matter who wins, Voždovac will partially confirm the vision of decayed world of 2009 portrayed in futuristic 1980s movies regardless of its government, and nobody knows where Kosjerić is, anyway (not being in Belgrade pretty much means topographic oblivion nowadays).

Still, the elections held great importance to the country. First of all, those were the first elections after the Great Serbian Radical Party Split Of 2009. Once the leader in rightist lunacy, Serbian Radical Party was split into followers of Vojislav Šešelj and followers of popular votes, now named Serbian Progressive Party.

Popular opinion is that Serbian Progressive Party is a lesser evil of two, so it was interesting to see how these two parties would fare in elections.

As it turns out, the Progressives (they are not really progressive, but then again, oil companies don’t really care about the environment despite the advertising) pretty much took most of the votes away from the Radicals, meaning that Šešelj is in for a surprise once he get back from the ICTY.

But that’s not really what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about some stuff that I observed during these elections.

Firstly, everybody wins! It’s amazing how party leaders will always express their satisfaction with election results.
— So, your party won 0.002%, how do you feel about it?
— I am quite satisfied. Given the negative campaign my opponents led, I think we did as best as we could. Of course, we had practically no media coverage, so the result is overall positive and establishes us as a firm opposition party.
— Sir, you got only one vote. A single ballot was cast for you!
— Quite so, a marvelous result. Yes indeed, my mother’s hip surgery went so well that she could go out and vote this time.
— State budget money for elections well spent, indeed…

As you can see, elections get personal here. It’s about connection between the politicians and constituency. Of course, these elections were perfectly useless. What do I get from a new pavement in Zemun, a pothole fixed in Voždovac or a garbage fill cleaned up in Kosjerić?

Nothing at all… Vox populi, vox Dei.