On day one, you walk down to your village or town's pub where x-party is having a meeting. This could be a village of 500 people and the SPD group is composed of 32 paying members (in the German system, if you want to have your say or participate....you pay into the pot, thus attending the meetings).
So you walk in....get registered, and get a party 'card'. Then you begin to mingle in the pub. Everyone is having a beer, wine, or soda. Things are fairly social...people are chatty.
The head guy opens up the meeting....talks over party topics, and various members get a chance to offer commentary. An hour passes, and the meeting starts some closure pattern.
Maybe you impressed a couple of folks on your first meeting, and as a new person....you got some immediate 'status'.
Months go by, and maybe half the crowd at the meeting are fairly supportive of you because of your logic, conversational topics, or 'charm'.
You don't necessarily have to be a junior version of 'Winston Churchill' or a up-and-coming JFK.
At some point, a year or two down the path....a vote comes up for the next village 'boss' of the party and you get nominated, and then elected. Then you get invited to the district meetings....where you mingle, talk over things with others, and if you were popular....you'd get set up for elections there.
You might engage in local politics (for mayor or city council), or you might avoid that angle and just skip responsibility situations.
I bring all of this up because of the Green Party episode in the Saarland with Irina Gaydukova.
In her case....around twenty-odd years ago, she left the Ukraine and settled in Germany. Around 2018, she joined the Green Party. There's not a lot said over her initial year or two. In the past six months, her career in the local Green Party took off, and she moved up to a fairly high level in the Saarland Green Party apparatus. In the past month, she was voted up to the number two level (deputy chair-person) for the state group.
I should state this fact....over the past five years....almost all of the parties have been stressing that women need to be in key roles of the functions. In fact, it's almost a 50-50 rule.....that women must be shown in leadership roles. It doesn't mean you are really into politics, or capable.....just that women have a vital role in party politics.
I kinda suspect that this played a role in Irina's progress.
Irina is fairly educated (has a degree in business management), and I would imagine that maybe if she'd been in the Green Party for 20 years, she'd know the script.
But after getting the deputy job....the party dragged her to a Q and A public media session. It didn't go well. She didn't really have any script in her mind, and everything came across as 'blonde answer'.
I kinda suspect that she was expand her social circle and saw the local political party business as a chance for that. She probably did well in the chat moments, and people were impressed with her general knowledge. Was she 'hard-as-nails' on environmentalism? I doubt it. Had she attended protests? I kinda doubt that.
After this all came out....the national apparatus for the Greens went and demanded that she step down....which she did.
What's curious about this whole event and the way it occurred?
A blonde tall gal with some brains and able to memorize the script for the party positions....could join up and move up the ladder in the village, the region, and the state....in a matter of five years. You could run for Bundestag membership and make the big adventure into Berlin (with the big boys). Three or four years pass, and you might be considered for some minister's position or even as a Chancellor candidate.
All of this worthy of a movie script? That's how I view this Irina story.
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