Congratulations Hamturk and Thank Yous

Day 1,964, 20:20 • Published in India Canada • by Alias Vision

By a final count of 61 to 49, the people of India have spoken and chosen Hamturk to be the next Country President.

Congratulations Hamturk, I wish you all the successes you hope for this coming month. Even if you achieve only a portion of your goals, it will be well earned as India has many challenges ahead.



Election Analysis and Postmortem.

The 110 total votes was the lowest total since Oct 2012 which coincidentally was also the month of Hamturk's last victory campaign and represents a drop of 30 from the previous election. Let's hope that is just a blip on the radar and not the introduction of a new trend.

My loss as a nominee from Yuuva also represents the first time in over a year that a candidate from the party was defeated (Feb 2012 HemanathanKumar won a close vote against troj4n20).

This was an interesting election as the tasks for the two nominees were very different. I had to mostly convince electors that I would be good for India. Meanwhile Hamturk mostly had to convince the same people that he wouldn't be bad. In large part this was because I remained an unknown quantity to many Indians while due to his long tenure in the country, Hamturk was always going to be a known entity.

Hamturk also ran a very smart campaign. He knew that he would beat me in a vacuum. Therefore he could wait for me to publish anything I liked before needing to make a move of his own. He was clever enough to use each of his campaign articles to also update on developments and introduce a positive spin. Overall he did exactly what he needed to do and the final results proved him right.



Writing on the wall.

Towards the end of the campaign I felt I was really behind the eight ball. At the same time you always question your instincts because you would rather facts speak to you than paranoia.

It started with the Celebrity of the Week project run by Goutham. It may seem unrelated but the types and amounts of responses you get to something like that often translates to support later on in things like CP races. When the week went by and there was no new articles from Goutham, I felt I was in trouble and that I hadn't yet reached enough people.

The second hint that I had a very big challenge ahead was when ICP announced their voting process to select their CP candidate. Hamturk, who hadn't started campaigning at all at that point, told me that I wouldn't win ICP support. I asked him "couldn't" or "wouldn't". He laughed it off and said both. Huh oh... ICP represents the biggest concentration of active and involved players. If I had no chance there, the climb to the top would be even tougher.

Third there was the whole nomination process. I was attacked for not including Hamturk on the Yuuva ballot and angered key people in ICP. Whether or not I had a chance there doesn't matter, an event like that will always cost you votes. It doesn't matter how it went down, just the perception of unfairness and bias will sink you. For the record, if I ever ran a primary vote again, I would still enforce the deadlines. There is too much work involved in doing it right to do otherwise.

Finally, there was the fact that I had a heck of a time putting a cabinet together. This is somewhat ironic due to the fact that I ended up with what I believe would have been a superb team. A lot of really smart people in key places with just the right amount of leadership and energy... could have been fantastic. But before I got there, I got a lot of "no" responses.



Conclusion.

The fun thing about the democratic process involved in choosing a CP is that you always end up with the candidate you deserve.

Even with all the hurdles I believe I had to deal with (and any number I never knew about) it was still a close race. I started out well with a 12 vote lead at one point which made me wonder if I had evaluated it all wrong. But over the course of two hours in the still early morning, Hamturk went on a 33-3 run. That was a devastating tally and Hamturk had an easy time the rest of the way.

Thank you everyone who supported me, voted for me. Thank you Yuuva and Jai Hind. Thank you to the team who was willing to take this journey with me.

I didn't win this one but on the whole I'm proud of how I got there. Until next time my friends.