Join the new world

I guess it would be apt to write an article about the roles and function of Party President during the congressional election - as I am going through it the very first time. When I first took over the job - I thought I had everything planned and figured out. Obviously not! Especially when i am trying to role out a new brand/face for the party, recruit/find active members to join our cause and rejuvenate the party forums and activity as a whole. So, as a lesson for myself and for aspiring party presidents, i thought it would be good to chroniclize my experience. After 4 congress medals - i think i can consider myself as a seasoned politician too.

Disclaimer: I can only provide example from my own experience in DPP. So, please don’t misconstrue this as a veiled propaganda article.

Early days (7-10 days before the election)
At this stage, newly elected party presidents should start compiling the candidate list for the congressional election. Generally, we need about 4-5 candidates per region. However this term, in order to block out the eSerbian candidates - DPP had to field 9 candidates in each region with several filler candidates. In the early days, it is important to sound/screen out the candidates to ensure only active, experienced/learning congress candidates are selected. Towards this, it is important to set out candidate-application procedure and some form of interview/selection process. An example for DPP is available here.

While I know nearly half the party reasonably, there are still around 50+ DPP members that I don’t know or have not talked to before. So, in the early days, a lot of PMing and get-to-know-candidates work have to be done. In addition, for me in particularly, significant amount of time and effort were placed into setting up the organisation / mechanism for DPP that would be useful for future elections/work. Most of them were based in DPP private forum . It would be useful at this stage to communicate closely to the past party presidents and other party seniors to have a clear idea of the party tradition, hierarchy and history. As I was also pushing for reforms and rebranding within DPP – it was crucial to organise meetings in order to achieve consensus amongst the leadership and membership of the party. I supposed this was in the spirit of democracy – though it was really difficult to gather everyone from around the world at one single convenient time. DPP had our own meeting where we discussed our name change, rebranding, party constitution amongst others.

Campaign week (3-6 days before the election)
By now, the official candidate list should be compiled. The party policy statements and election promises should be published. For example, DPP January congressional election statement and candidate lists are shown here. . In addition, all congress candidates should have made their presentation/announcement by now. In reality, campaigning now is nearly futile as most people will vote based on their party membership and friendship. DPP attempted to campaign for more members over the past week – and our numbers rose by approx 8-10%. It was hardly a huge rise despite the effort.

The tricky thing at this stage for party presidents is to identify which of those in the 4-5 candidates/region are priority candidates and the reasons for choosing them. This can be and probably is the tougher task for party presidents as some aspiring candidates have to be disappointed. The party presidents have to consider the amount of members/votes they have, before committing the party into X number of candidates. By stretching the party votes too much, a particular party might end up with very low number of candidates. In the past, I have seen very good people – leaving a particular party – simply because the party presidents are not sending votes to him/her during congressional election. For few, this can be a deal-breaker – so it should be handled with care. I can only apologise to those who have great hopes - but yet, at the end DPP (via me) can only deliver so many votes.

Pre-election logistics (1-2 days before the election)
This is the most crucial stage of the whole election and probably the most time-consuming one. Ideally, the party members would be broken down into various voting squad with squad leaders coordinating the voting instruction and moving tickets distribution. Some newbies might ask – why do we move voters? Isn’t that cheating? Well, when I started this game, I thought it was funny to move around to vote (gerrymandering and ghost voters!). Unfortunately, that’s how the way the game work as most of our active citizens are living in Peninsular Malaysia –and the congress candidates number is based on regions (not number of citizen in that region).

I think in my first party president experience – I screwed up this party the most as I had a date over the weekend which distracted me. I guess RL > eLife. Hahaha. Nevertheless, looking at the election progress so far – I think we did reasonably well as DPP has garnered 65 votes (from a 103 membership). That’s 63% turnout, compared to FUP-41% (more to come), AC-93.4% and PR-60.7%. Nevertheless, due to last minute organisation, overlapping instruction and probably lack of manpower – DPP has some stray voters and so forth. Last minute voting instruction was not completely followed despite various means of communication. Internally, party presidents should have a clear flow of communication to their members. In my case, DPP communication line is not mature/perfect.

Election day
Even after all the preparation – the election itself can be completely unpredictable. Depending on the voting patter of your rival parties – any plans or strategy can be completely thrown astray. One good ‘case study example’ would be the October 2009 congressional election in which Mudkipz Worker Party (MWP) spent 29 votes only to have one candidate qualified as wildcards. In a way, MWP made some tactical errors when it fielded all its top candidates within the same regions as its allied FUP partner. The final result was a lot of cannibalism of votes. It is essential for Party Presidents or his/her team to be around on IRC and online through out the day of election. This is to facilitate direct and clear voting instruction to all members. More so, the election strategy typically changes itself over the course of the day. I often describe congressional election like politician battles – where defence and attack can be coordinated depending on the response of your ‘enemies’.

Post-Election day
Finally, after all the adrenaline rush – the election will come to a close. The tasks of party presidents I believe, does not cease immediately. It is utterly important to establish two things at this closure stage: a) national unity towards a united eNation. The winner should be grateful while the loser should be graceful; and b) party unity – especially if the party had suffered losses. No one likes to loss, particularly, the party presidents and teams, who have spent hours and hours in the preceding weeks. Nevertheless, in every battle there will be winner and loser. The importance is always the process and the ‘thrill’ derived from it.

So, there you have it. An account of my party-presidency experience – stressful but fun nevertheless. I don’t think I can handle it again – and I cannot imagine the responsibility / time required for a properly run reign of Country Presidency.

Thanks for reading. As usual – vote and subscribe!

Yours,
Carr de Vaux

Ps: Don’t vote for me in the congressional election anymore! Vote for other DPP candidates! Thank you!