Politics stands for ‘POpuLarITI ContestS”

One of my sources informed me of the things Hugo had in store, and it frightened me. Actually, I was terrified:

On July 10, the day where he planned his big event, he would announce his running for the mayor's office for the upcoming elections.

This in itself wouldn't be too big of a problem, our politics are notoriously inefficient. More to that later, as there were more pressing matters at hand. The main problem is that for every matter that involves the cat, there's some evil plot of the rat. Not only will this result in a big commotion for the 'event', campaigning also requires constant public appearances. Claws down, this is worrying.

The strange thing here is that Hugo has never shown any ambition in that regard. Note that this surely isn't due to the fact that his events would endanger his followers or otherwise innocent fools, he never cared for them in the past, meaning that there should be a tangible reason hiding somewhere. I figured I'd check how much I have on my plate first, and then decide whether or not to investigate. Didn't want to end up as the busybody burning their nose on matters that concern the truly powerful, who usually prefer to pull the strings from the shadows. Not yet, at least.

Talking about things on my plate, I entered my small garden. Things have been growing a lot lately. Rather than spending money on food, I concluded that this was the perfect moment to start 'mowing'. Thus, I simply ate whichever plant was growing dangerously tall. Lead to a diverse meal! Where was I? Ah yeah, our political situation in Faculty City. That's quite the story:

Honestly, politics in Faculty City are totally and utterly meaningless. It's fairly simple. There probably are over 100 different kinds of animals living in the city. Most of them have different traditions and ideas on how to live their lives. Now consider that among each kind, there furthermore are diverse political views and interests. It's virtually impossible to please all of them.

Our city has a democratic structure. We have different parties with different intents and purposes. Mostly federations of different animals with some common ground and similar visions. For example, mammals could be trying to set up some institution to protect mothers, or grant them special rights during and after pregnancy.

The parliament is made up of those parties relative to their voting points, said points acquired through elections. Don't ask how the points get assigned, I don't know.

First of all, I'm not allowed to vote in the first place (due to turtle), second reason being that there are 'very' complex rules in play. If every animal had one vote to cast, wouldn't that lead to insects governing everything? Maybe it's family- or household-based. I could ask a dedicated journalist or look up the laws in a local library, but quite frankly, I just don't care too much. Not only does it not concern me, allowing me to comfortably hide behind my ignorance, the reality is that the political system is completely inefficient.

I think that as of now, there are 10 different parties in our parliament. The most powerful has 16 % of the voting points. In order to pass a law, over 60 % of envoys are required to coordinate with each other. This means that unless the entire city is in favour of something, nothing will every come of it.

Some additional things to note:

Parts of the city, so called districts, can be locally governed by a party. This allows them to pass local laws, an action that doesn't require consent of any other party. There are two catches:

The law can't stand in conflict with a city- or even country-wide law. In addition to that, the law cannot ban specific animals from entering. Things that can be modified include the tax structure, public safety and transport, education related policies and specific fluff rules.

As an example, the penguin district banned snowboarding a long time ago. This ban has been lifted and reinstated multiple times over the course of the past few years, is heavily debated not only in their district, but also the neighbouring ones and leads to a lot of bad blood and discord within their governing body.

However, most of the city belongs to 'open' districts without additional rules. Such as the house that I'm renting. In fact, base requirement for being allowed to live in a district is to be part of their political party, something that's impossible for me. Not that I'd want to live in any of their districts either… I swear.

Due to the inefficiency that comes with the process, politicians lost their salaries amidst public uproar over 50 odd years ago. Multiple reforms have been attempted, many promising laws went up for debate. In the end, nothing happened though. This results in our rather… 'peculiar' ways for politicians to advertise their parties and generate money or exposure:

Politics have become a form of public entertainment. The city houses multiple arenas. Politicians choose an opposing party, set a date for the occasion and rent one of these arenas. Then they sell tickets for the performance. The worse seats, those that are far away from the action, tend to be heavily discounted or even free. Most arenas end up sold out and completely packed due to that.

In these events, pretty much everything can happen. Competitions, usually. Sometimes there are theatre performances. Those are either set up by one party on their own, or the party chooses another to go with them. Outside of public slaughter, there are no rules at play.

You can try and defame the other party, you can try and cheat during your competition, you can schedule a competition in say… how long individual animals can hold their breath, and one side may turn up with a wildly coloured dog disguised as a funky unicorn as their participant, whose job is to throw snacks at the audience rather than compete. If your side believes that this would win you more votes than it would cost you, it's fair game.

Currently, the largest party is, how could it be any different, called 'Lion Share'. This allows them to field the mayor. Our current mayor is a dignified wolf, who grew up in the wilderness and had seen all kinds of things. He seems very charismatic and has great understanding for many issues. Rose to prominence when he publicly announced his endorsement for a widely popular burger chain. Followed by him mercilessly humiliating some poor ape, who seemed to be the favourite, in a burger-eating contest, devouring almost double the amount of what the ape could stomach.

Their agenda consists of the reduction of taxes and cheaper real-estate for the food industry, carnivore protection (related to how easy it is to accuse them of various crimes and how hard it is for them to object and to prove their innocence), an attempt to improve trade relations with some empire to the north, an action that would result in a broadened market for colourful dyes. They want to make immigration more difficult (probably due to the fact that law forbids you to eat a citizen, meaning that only non-citizens are fair game) and curb insect rights.

Then there's the Beef Alliance. Don't let the name fool you, the most dedicated voters are cows, pigs and (funnily enough) tigers. Not exactly sure how they all teamed up, but they stand for bigger roads, more meadows and an increase in public parks. They also demand more mud playgrounds and public warming stations, with the latter being dedicated rooms with infrared lamp spots. Conflict with other factions arises with their planned declaring of pastures as no-fly zones.

An interesting side note is that they have their own district, where they have 'private' pastures with high fences and dedicated bouncers. Access is only permitted with a specific passport.

I know that Dustin the Beaver is part of some party called Public Infrastructure Initiative. It's made up of like-minded individuals who prefer an amphibious lifestyle, coupled with some fish and other water-based animals. They were founded based on the idea of waterway expansion. Over time, they added water cleanliness and stricter pollution laws to their agenda. In the hope of increasing their elector base, they started demanding reforestation, which I think was the main argument that convinced Dustin.

My personal favourite is a party called 'Rush', they mostly want high-speed travelling areas, think of secondary parallel roads meant for the faster animals among us. Could call them multiple lanes I guess. They also want to ease speed restrictions and the punishment for going above said limits. It's one of the few parties that has very diverse animals as members, even hard to recruit ones like ants or those prejudiced cats. I'm only slightly jealous of those living in their district...

If you've paid attention, you'll have noticed that all the parties plan on using the available space in different ways, which means that there'll never be common ground for them. This makes me fairly sure that nothing will ever happen in our parliament. And this is where Hugo comes in.

Not only is the position of mayor the only salaried office in our political structure, it's also the only position that has any kind of power. The mayor is allowed to call the direction which the city will be heading towards (granted there's sufficient support among the parliament) and represents us in the national assembly.

I'm not too sure if Hugo can gain the support needed to make waves. If he does however, then it'll be hard times ahead. The cat in a position where he can safely exploit all the goodwill of the entire city and be praised for it, that's very scary. I also fear for the global tuna population.

I think I can't change anything there, I'll have to hope that he doesn't get enough votes and that the other parties will be too stubborn to strike deals with him. I also don't know his agenda, which laws he wants to establish and which projects he wants to kick off. I better prepare to deal with the inevitable attacks of the rat.

But all that aside, I should soon receive news about the Hedge Funding employee I wanted to interview. Kinda looking forward to that.