Around the end of 2014, some Ukrainian TV production folks were looking for ideas for a show. They eventually came to this crazy idea. They would create a TV comedy series where this guy (a teacher) comes up and is so overcome by the corruption of the Ukrainian government, that he runs for President, and wins. The show, premiering in October of 2015, was called 'Servant of the People'.
It ran for three seasons, and they made 51 total episodes. It was a highly popular show and they would have gone on to make several more seasons, and probably another 51 episodes on top of that, except this funny thing happened.
Somewhere in 2018....with the public chatter going on about April 2019 national election....folks got this funny idea. They would go and register a new political party out of the thin air....'Servant of the People Party'. Then they pulled the actor who played the President's part in the series out, and ran him (Volodymyr Zelensky) as President.
So as things unfolded about two months ago, the primary business ended, with no one winning a majority....including the current President of the Ukraine (Poroshenko). However in this period of the run-up.....the polling folks suggested a large number of Ukrainians were leaning toward the 'Servant of the People Party' and willing to vote for the comedian star of the show. After the primary results roll in.....the current President, and the comedy show President, are the final two.
Yesterday's election concluded. The comedy show President got around 71-percent of the vote, beating Poroshenko by roughly 45 points.
The comedian will now become President? Yes.
So what really happened here? I call this the Jon Gnarr-effect. Jon was an Icelandic comedian (a fairly good one) who decided (mostly to make a point) in 2009 to run for mayor of Reykjavik, Iceland. He formed his own party out of thin air, 'The Best Party'. Every speech was full of promises, ranging from free towels to use at the public pool, to promising to stop corruption.....mostly by participating in it out in the open. Here at the beginning of the social media period, he got attention.
On the day of the Icelandic election, the Best Party won big....six out of the 15 city council seats, and Jon won enough to become mayor of the city. For four years, he served the city, and actually didn't screw up on anything. In some ways, he proved that anyone, even a comedian, can effectively serve the public.
I think the same result came out of the Ukrainian TV series, with the public buying into the idea of comedian being President.
Would this kind of thing happen in Germany? Well....the TV journalists and intellectuals would tell you 'NO'. I can think of four German comedians (Stefan Raab, Ilka Bessin, Jan Bohmermann, and Bulent Ceylan) of public standing....that if they announced a candidacy, with the creation of their own political party.....they could take 10-percent of the national vote. It's not enough to win the Chancellor's chair, but it's enough to really sharpen up and make things impossible for the CDU or SPD to form governments if they were to win.
This Ukrainian election a shock? Maybe. But it's a general frustration with people across the globe. Regular politics has become so theatrical and fake, that no one has a problem with comedians running for office.
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