What kind of candidates do we need?

On the occasion of the past local government elections in Estonia

Every autumn campaign posters of candidates for local government could be seen everywhere. The posters show that the number of politicians is off the normal scale.

“Proud throughout Estonia”, “Works”, “We will do it”, “New blood”. If any of the parties would restrain from posting wastepaper, then they could straight away be respected at least for not wasting financial and human resources. In essence, the time of slogans is irrevocably gone and such meaningless howls only prove it right.

Politics means many interests (from Greek: poly - many and tech - interest). So when there is no significant difference between interests of candidates, there is no politics. Right now, there is very little domestic politics in Estonia, instead there are many inter-party squabbles. Lets look at fundamental preconditions of the current state of affairs.

Throughout centuries, Estonia has been tossed from the Russian civilization to the Western civilization, and back. For the last 20 plus years, Estonia was allowed to be part of the EU with the condition of maintaining a certain political discipline. This political discipline involves a radical reduction of cooperation with Russia, de-Russification of the local population and refusal of concentration of any high-tech production and processes in the country. For doing all of this, Estonia is granted funds from the EU treasury that are significantly superior to Estonia’s economic results. With such great amounts of money, the national “elite” has completely imagined themselves as being "celestial", and for the commoners they have created a good enough infrastructure: lit up sidewalks, gifted new trams and trains, gave an opportunity to quickly earn some extra cash in the neighboring Scandinavia.

Understanding this, it is ridiculous to hear from candidates puny promises of improvement of living conditions: “The newborn benefits would be €300 more”, “We will repair Intra-district roads”. All of these would be done anyway, not because of a high quality of government domestically, but because of subsidies from EU in exchange for the aforementioned discipline of the local “elite”. Furthermore, this will not relieve the discomfort of residing in the country.

The social discomfort is conditioned, firstly, by the concessions described above, which the “elite” agreed to out of their own gain and comforting of the population by the European subsidies. Secondly, by the fact that European social problems are replicated by Estonia with the same speed as the Euro-integration process.

Countries of the Western civilization, including European ones, are inevitably coming close to the social and biospherical collapse. The reason for that is the version of globalization accepted by them. This version allows:

• opposition of humans and the biosphere;
• usury and, hence, economic slavery;
• social divide by the principle of crowd and “elite”.

We could, of course, continue to Europeanize, but we have to clearly recognize the consequences of the chosen way of globalization. These consequences could be easily predicted by watching the Russian film “Kin-dza-dza”[1].

China and Japan have tried to propose their own values as global values in a series of state documents and actions. However, by looking closer at what keeps the Chinese and Japanese societies together, we can understand, that the same slavery and nature-fighting ambitions exist in those countries. Only these ambitions are practiced based on the local social doctrines and scriptures, and not based on the Bible, like in the West.

Russia, on the contrary, has always strived to live by conscience, in harmony with Nature and on principles of social justice. Of course, the Russian version of globalization is in no way tolerant to those living off of collected interest, and, therefore, for some the version of globalization based on usury has always been unacceptable. Also the Russian version of globalization requires from each individual certain efforts in restructuring his/her own psyche towards Humaneness. But putting efforts into improving oneself is also not to the liking of millions of ordinary people of all nationalities[2].

When there are no meaningful discussions of these conceptions of globalization at a state level, there is no domestic political debate, but only inter-party squabbles and intrigues.

In conclusion, the process of globalization has entered such stage, that even small countries and even local governments need such managers, that recognize existing conceptions of globalization, are capable of making a conscious choice between them, and capable of acting locally for the realization of the chosen conception into reality. So far, Estonian politicians have the worldview of "little people" and have discussions more suitable to janitors: “Our cause is small, and what do we care about various conceptions of globalization?”. But these are politicians, what about the people?

[1] Kin-dza-dza is a film about two people from the Soviet Union unexpectedly being transported to another galaxy, onto planet Pluke where a strict form of oligarchy rules. The civilization on the planet is highly developed technologically, possessing teleportation, time travel, and advanced weapon technology, but is devastated ecologically and socially as a result of the depraved moral state of its inhabitants.

[2] It should be noted that the far from prosperous state of the majority of the Russian population, of Russia itself, is due to the fact that Russia has not determined which way of globalization it will take, which currently makes it subject to the principles of globalization accepted by the West.

Initially published by our representative at https://medium.com/in-russian/e827cafe1c56 (original Russian version).