I just got a letter from the Argentinian embassy reminding me that, come October, I should vote in the National Presidential elections. In Argentina voting is mandatory and not voting could potentially lead to fines (key word here: potentially; when I was around 20, I refused to vote in several elections hoping I would be found and fined and could take my case to court under the premise that the system did not represent me and I wanted direct democracy, etc, nobody came for me and I believe there were no records of my lack of voting, so I waited to make my grandiose statement in vain; shoot me, I was an idealist back then, even more so than I am now).
So, anyways, I am supposed to vote and this makes me very uncomfortable because honestly, I do not think that I have the right to try and influence the politics of a place where I haven’t lived in a decade and a half. Moreover, I do not even know the candidates or what they have done or promise to do. Sure, I read media and I can more or less infer what’s going on but the reality is that politics are better known through living somewhere, not through reading what corporate owned media (with its own interests and lobbying) have to say. To make matters even worse, all my political activism and involvement are localized in Amsterdam, the city where I live and where my life is rooted.
Perhaps I should ask some key family members who they are voting for and pick the candidate that exactly opposes them. Historically, it has always been the case that, if some of my family stood for candidate A, I stood for candidate Z. So I can always use that yardstick. Still, they should perhaps rethink this system. Maybe after one has lived abroad for X number of years, one shouldn’t be allowed to vote anymore. Because, really, there is no way we could possibly know what’s going on in a politically responsible manner.
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