Thursday, November 16, 2006

Poland’s next president? - now with English subtitles!


His name is Krzysztof Kononowicz, He wears nice jumpers.

One of the stranger candidates in the recent first round of local elections was Mr Kononowicz, an independent candidate standing in the mayor elections in Podlasie, in the northeast.

His policies were not what attracted the 2.5 million visitors to his web site (election videos here with English subtitles) as he didn’t really have any: he spends most of the time rambling on about everything and nothing, much like you hear people moaning on the bus. Funny thing is that he has taken the trouble to write all this nonsense out, and does his best to project his message. He is like the UKs Tony Blair: image, image, image...

In the end, though, the 'tipping point' of his personality cult for the electorate must have been his jumpers – one of which he later sold on the internet for 200 zloty (50 Euro).

Psephologists are currently chewing over his successful campaign (he got nearly 2% of the vote). Everyone is talking about how he is showing established politicians how to campaign on the net.

For sure, Krzysztof has great charisma, but the interest in him is surly because he is an ‘anti-politics' candidate; voting for guys like him is like sticking a finger up at a much loathed political class in Poland. It's also a vote for the traditional craft of Polish jumper making.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

There are more opportunities to get replicas of not only the sweater but there are t-shirts, too:

http://allegro.pl/item142016979_hit_krzysztof_kononowicz_gustowne_koszulki_.html

beatroot said...

There is a bloke standing at the corner of our block who wears one of them. In fact, all his mates have them too. Where do these jumpers come from? Is there a special shop?

Anonymous said...

Dunno. Just saw 'em from going to Kononowicz's official website which had a link to allegro.pl which I assume is the Polish EBay.

Kwasniewski and Kaczynski t-shirts and sweaters were nowhere to be found.

Anonymous said...

Sadly he has a great future in Polish Politics.

Anonymous said...

id have to say he has a great future for poland..unfortunately he'd probably have to watch out for communists..if he has any intelligence whatsoever he should have no problem dealing with it.
Christina