While people’s discontent for politicians is often expressed in a diverse range of ways, Mexicans have taken it that one step further according to a NY Daily News report. The Mexican town of Xalapa has a new candidate for the town’s mayoralty – Morris the cat. The cat’s owner, Sergio Camacho, says his cat is the symbol of the discontent towards Mexican politicians.
In Xalapa, Eastern Mexico, Morris the cat is riding the social media wave and attracting the support of unhappy voters. His slogan “Tired of Voting for Rats? Vote for a Cat” has caught the imagination of quite a few people in Xalapa and across the world. This has sparked a trend across Mexico of people nominating their pets and farm animals to run in the July the 7th elections being held in 14 states.
Xalapa, the capital of the Mexican state Veracruz, is a city of 450,000 people that has reportedly been troubled by drug violence, corruption, scandals and brutal murders of media workers.
Despite the light-hearted and fun nature of Morris the cat the overall sentiment is quite clear – there is discontent towards the current political system. At some stage you’ve got to hope that the people of Xalapa grab a reality check because if they want to change how things work then the last thing that is going to do any good is wasting their vote on a cat. In my opinion they should be getting together to encourage participatory reforms of the state governance process or they should develop new parties and candidates to put forward in the election.
What are your thoughts on this story?
Image courtesy of Stringer/Mexico/Reuters
He’ll probably be a far better (and far more honest) candidate than 99.9% of the worlds politicians.
Just what I thought. A protest forwarding the message that the Mexican government is so terrible, a Cat can do better than them.
that would be a great thought.
What the mindset & the world is coming to?