hahaha, so creative!!!!
Washington Post-
NEE Party Attempts to Blow Belgian Election
Mysterious Mouthpiece Mocks Parliament With Sexy Ads
There are campaign promises, there are dirty campaign promises and then there is Belgium's NEE party, which is offering voters something well beyond the bounds of decency, politics and, by some estimations, human capability. According to their Web site, Tania Derveaux, the "leading NEE party senate candidate in Belgium," is promising oral sex to 40,000 men in order to get voters to write the word "nee" ("no") on their ballots June 10th.
The genesis of the 40k fellatio comes in response to ads by several of Belgium's more traditional parties promising "new job opportunities in
ridiculous amounts." NEE, a self-proclaimed "impartial protest movement," responded with a parody campaign in which "candidate Tania" posed naked and promised voters "400,000 new jobs." As you might imagine, such provocative advertising "resulted in international media attention," and NEE was soon besieged by e-mail requests for the kind of "jobs" that led to Bill Clinton's impeachment. Sensing that they could get people to think twice about who to believe by making "absolutely ridiculous promises," Ms. Derveaux announced plans to perform oral sex on the first 40,000 people who wrote in.
Though NEE's goal had been to take a "general stab at the evolution of politics in campaigns and media," the response has been so huge, with hundreds of thousands of hopefuls submitting their names, that perhaps people didn't realize it was a joke. One independent report used Alexa tracking in the days following the announcement and found that
NEE's site received twice as many page views as
The White House's Web site and 10 times as many as Britain's Labor Party URL.[/B] But, as with most parody, there is a serious message behind the mockery. In this case it is that "real" voting options no longer exist in Belgium since the 10+ parties are often forced to form coalitions under which "
nothing fundamental will change."
According to a statement from Tania, NEE was "founded almost two years ago with the intention and hopes of improving our democratic system by offering the people the option to vote 'no' against the current political situation if they felt the need to cast a protest vote." In Belgium voting is mandatory, and empty ballots are simply divided among the elected parties. NEE's goal is to "stimulate political awareness and to offer the people the means to protest officially." According to the site, if elected, NEE would not fill their "seats in parliament, resulting in a loss of income and power among the other parties," thus giving voters "the power to sanction
politicians if needed."
This, of course, means that Ms. Derveaux is not actually running for office, which is probably a good thing since it will take her an estimated 500 days to fulfill her "campaign promise," at a rate of 80 encounters per day. Whether NEE is a joke, grassroots activism or something in between, the people of Belgium have taken notice, with major politicians "from all parties" expressing admiration and "awe" toward their efforts. Moreover, it's safe to say that not since Monty Brewster's fictional "None of the Above" campaign has there been such a creative attempt to encourage abstention. And if NEE does manage to take down a few seats in June, it will not only prove the obvious -- that sex sells -- but also that an absurd joke can at times be a more logical choice than the government's status quo.
27-05-2007, 12:44 AM
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