There was a great number of events that took place over the last month and that I would love to comment upon, but since I have to choose just one for the purposes of this short column, this will be the second round of the Cypriot presidential elections.
Cyprus is one of the countries that follow the two-round electoral system to decide the winner of its presidential elections. This means that if no candidate receives the required number of votes, all but the two candidates receiving the most votes are eliminated, and a second round of voting is held where the voters must choose again, but this time only between the two remaining candidates.
For good or ill, it is customary for reporters or even individual citizens, to ask the eliminated candidates as to which of the two remaining options they (the citizens) should vote for.
I find direct responses to this question (ie “you must vote for X” as opposed to “I am personally going to vote for X”), as if we live in some form of hereditary dictatorship, to be distasteful at the very least.
What is even worse than that however, is having eliminated candidates reaching the pinnacle of idiocy (I knew this would come in handy!) by replying that since the remaining candidates have different views than them, people should abstain because neither of the remaining options is any good.
As if we didn’t have high enough abstention rates in western countries…
But that is OK. Idiotic or not, everyone is entitled to their opinion I guess. Just make sure you bookmark this page and next you hear any candidate, for any public post, in any country, talking about abstention rates, send them this text. You will do them good. Better to have them think twice what they are saying in the morning news, than realizing the fallacy of their statements in midday and asking to redress for the night news.