Given the current rules of the game, the fleeting emergence of campaigns such as the Morris cat, which discourage voting and are disguised as somehow boosters of citizen’s awareness, are only giving an advantage to those with greater electoral mobilization.
“[He] possesses (Calvin) Coolidge’s low-key manner, (John) Kennedy’s animal magnetism and (Abraham) Lincoln’s honesty”. No, this is not the description made by former Governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, to Time magazine, when asked to describe President Peña Nieto. It’s actually a quote from a presentation of Eleanor Mondale – daughter of former U.S. Vice-President, Walter Mondale – from which she considered the best Presidential candidate in her country that year: Morris, The Cat.
Indeed, that was the original Morris (at least a subsequent version that evolved from the first kitten that, using that name, has been the image of the catfood brand 9 Lives since the 1970s). As part of an advertising campaign with no political end in sight, Morris “ran for President” under the Finicky Party, with a slogan that incited cats to always ask for the best, for that purpose they should demand 9Foods, the catfood “with real meat”.
It is well known that the Morris candidacy to the Xalapa municipal Presidency has impressed both in Mexico and abroad. Even though it is impossible not to acknowledge how viral this phenomenon has become, particularly regarding social networks – as at June 17th, Morris has about 126 thousand Facebook likes (less than half of that number are Xalapa residents, in the words of the campaign’s creators) – it is worth asking: how big is this so-called citizen’s initiative?
It should be noted that the idea of nominating a non-human candidate for a public charge is hardly a new fact. One of the first cases in history was the alleged appointment of Emperor Caligula’s horse, Incitatus, as consul. Going beyond the theory of a sign of madness from the Roman Emperor, revisionist historians have proposed that the aforementioned act was a mockery intended to prove that his horse had greater governance abilities than the rest of the members of the Senate. A similar feeling was created by the Morris Xalapensis in a certain section of the population, mocking this unfortunate – though deserved in several cases – generalization of the Mexican politicians: idle, cheating, among several other negative descriptions.
Closer to our time, during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, held in Chicago, the countercultural movement YIP (Youth International Party), whose members were self-proclaimed ‘yippies’ (a radical step further from the ‘hippies’) intended to nominate Pigasus, the Immortal Pig, for the Presidency of the United States. The yippie campaign pledge was: “They (the system) nominate a President and he eats the people. We nominate a President and the people eat him”.
Yippie leaders caused some riots outside the venue in which the Democrat event was held and faced a trial for conspiracy charges during the Nixon administration. All of them were absolved. One of the most radical members, Jerry Rubin, who freed the pig in the middle of a crowd so it could “sworn in as candidate” had a peculiar outcome. Sick of (according to him) countercultural excesses (sex, drugs and so on), he decided to become an entrepreneur and investor of nature products (legal ones, of course). The wealth amounted in the next two decades made him a multimillionaire, going from yippie to yuppie. Rubin stated: “creation of wealth is the true American revolution. What is needed is capital infusion in the poorest zones in the country”. That way, as it has happened in many cases throughout the world, a passionate “anti-system” activist turned into a successful “system” businessman. There’s a lot of that in the Morris Xalapensis case.
The overwhelmingly fraying harangue of “Do not vote for a politician” – rephrased in different contexts – still produces a great effect given the short memory of most of the electorate. A little more than a decade ago, the political franchise founded by Jorge González Torres based its proselytism on the slogan “Don’t vote for a politician, vote for an ecologist!”. Nowadays Mexico has a consolidated Green Party, though “somehow weak” in its ecological vein.
Maybe the Morris Xalapensis creators do not intend to become a political party but they do have the enormous potential of giving – voluntarily or involuntarily – an additional boost to the misunderstood (to say the least) democratic transition. It is true, political parties have rightfully gained a terrible reputation with shameful corruption stories, nepotism at the expense of State resources, arrogance, manipulating population needs with electoral aims and, let it be said, citizens’ ambitions, power abuses and most serious of it all, letting down those who see them as legitimate means of representation. Nevertheless, as long as the party system does not face a thorough rethinking, even beyond improving the delicate concept of citizens’ candidacies – which constitute another long story to tell regarding their relevance – the aforementioned organizations will continue, as mandated by law, “calling the shots”.
By the way, speaking of law, the rumors of an eventual annulment of the Xalapa election via a massive voting for Morris Xalapensis, are unfounded. Even if 99 percent of the Xalapa electorate voted for the cat – which would count as a vote for “unregistered candidates”, not as invalid ballots – or just cancelled out their votes, one of the candidates would assure his or her victory with a single ballot. According to the 135th article of Ignacio de la Llave’s Veracruz Electoral Code, “the annulment of an election may only be declared when the causes invoked are explicitly stated in [the] Code […]”. Among the grounds for invalidity, stated in the Fifth Book, Second Title, First Chapter of the aforementioned regulation, the contabilization of a certain percentage of votes for non-registered candidates (such as Morris Xalapensis) or invalid ballots, are not among them.
The only case in which Xalapa would not have a winner in the July 7th elections is if registered candidates acquire the “Milhouse-Simpson Syndrome”. In the famous animated American sitcom The Simpsons, Bart Simpson loses the election of classroom chief because neither him nor his best friend Milhouse go to the polls, unlike his rival Martin Prince and his campaign coordinator. Prince’s victory by two votes against zero reflects in an absurd manner what happens when there’s an extremely indifferent electorate against a barely sufficient mobilization “apparatus”, barely enough to obtain the ultimate goal in a formal democracy: to win following the rules of the game.
Now, even if these rules are completely followed, it does depend on citizens’ active participation. The achievements of organized civil society are remarkable, specially in recent years, when law is not fully on its side. Civic powers is undeniable. The problem is we remember this power only on election time, right when, paradoxically, due to the system structure, is the moment when we less can actually do something about. Was our advocate Morris Xalapensis napping when the legislative discussion regarding citizen candidacies occurred?
Given the current rules of the game, the fleeting emergence of campaigns such as the Morris cat, which discourage voting and are disguised as somehow boosters of citizen’s awareness, are only giving an advantage to those with greater electoral mobilization. This can be expressed with the so-called “partisan hard vote” or in the simple and coarse co-option of the vote by using taxpayers’ resources.
Among the collateral effects of publicity against partisan voting or even favoring vote due to the scarce possibilities of actually winning, the triumph of the least wanted candidate by the “alternative electors” may be an option in the table. For instance, in 2000, there were surely many Ralph Nader voters who would’ve rather given his or her vote in Florida to Al Gore so he would’ve beaten George W. Bush in the disputed Presidential election (to this day, many people throughout the world still regret that result). The phrase “every vote counts” is not a cliché.
As a conclusion, the future of Morris, the cat, is uncertain. What is most likely is that, like a good cat, once it has satisfied its need for attention, it will return to sleep indifferent, carefree and selfishly. It’s irrelevant whether it is a cat, a donkey or a pig: something ridicule will end in a ridicule manner. “Actions” is a highly misunderstood word. In politics, acting is not designing a campaign in order to sell t-shirts, spread witty images or coming up with a catchphrase or song. That may do well with chips or soda salesmen (and Mexico has already experienced that those individuals are not the best to rule a country).
Political actions are to be made everyday, they imply being aware of the decisions made by those who govern us, not only when they are publicly mocked for their scandals or when they are longing for our attention in order to assure a vote. However, the most important is to enhance and practice a civic culture that is essential in the consolidation of a true democracy, issued by exercising responsible civic actions. In other words, we will be closer to the first Morris, the one from the catfood adverts, promoting a fussy democracy, full of complaints towards politicians but underpinned in the sloppiness of aimless meows.
Antonio De la Cuesta
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