Elections, elections, and elections once again. As surely everyone remembers, elections to the Sejm and Senate were recently held in Poland.
Everyone already knew before the elections who had the best chances and, in short, they were not interesting. Some time later, another election took place, but not for the Polish parliament—for the student council at Secondary School No. 1 on Tyrankiewiczów Street. As in every election, campaigns were conducted by particular election teams. It was the same at the secondary school. Election posters were pasted up throughout the entire school, from the attic to the basement. One of the teams, in order to put forward its candidate for school president—which was the main objective of these elections—simply created anti-advertising for him by writing on the posters, “DON’T VOTE FOR OUR CANDIDATE” or “IF YOU VOTE FOR HIM, YOU’LL LOSE YOUR ONLY VOTE.” Other candidates used their acting skills, occupying school breaks with speeches, which were not always boring. Still others mixed Borys Yeltsin and “bald” Clinton into their election campaign. The remaining candidates put up only posters with short slogans, hoping that their modesty would tempt voters. Returning to the slogans—they were extremely varied. Here are a few of them: “Our Gosia, though small, is perfect in every way,” “Small and long is beautiful,” “Maybe it won’t be better, but it will certainly be more fun.” Or slogans addressed directly to voters: “Vote for the dark horse of the elections” or “Vote for the candidate of the australopithecines.”
The fight for the “throne” of school president was truly fierce. In order to win as many voters as possible, the candidates promised various things—for example, that they would abolish the teaching staff, but first hold them accountable for everything; that they would establish smoking rooms and drinking rooms, which would supposedly serve the intellectual development of young people, of course. They also called for replacing lessons with breaks: a lesson would last 20 minutes and a break 45 minutes, which was supposed to increase students’ desire to study. Others, wishing to win voters, proposed only enlivening the school culturally: more class plays, cabarets, or solo performances—in short, “students as young actors.”
Returning to the elections themselves. The campaign lasted a week, and on Friday every student at the secondary school could cast a genuine, democratic vote—not by marking an “X,” but by writing the surname of their candidate.
As the student community expected, the “dark horse” of the elections won, but the winner will write about that.