Mayor in the making

I've started for a few weeks now, together with my party colleagues, the pre-campaign for the election of the mayor and of the local council. Politics may be a bitch but it's the only bitch we have. And for access in between her legs, we all run like thirsty men in the desert, because we see there the promise of a better life and an easier living.

In the end, it's just another fuck&rob. I just hope that this time it's just a little bit different. I'm not wishing for the bitch to love us but at least I hope that she will not rob me blind of my cigarettes after the fuck.

As part of this pre-campaign, we roam neighbourhoods and streets that haven't been roamed by authorities for ages. For me, these areas of my city are not unknown as I have a very good knowledge of the place I have spent my life until now and also because of Steemit. I have roamed the city long and wide during the beginning part of my Steemit life, looking for special pictures to take and to steal or in order to find good stories to write to you, ungrateful people of Steemit :P.

Together with our mayor candidate, this time we have been in what it once was a colony for both the railways and for a very old oil refinery that is no longer working but which has left its toxins and trails all over the place. The Columbia refinery was working back in the prewar times (during the 20's until the 50's). Once it was taken by the communists, the Americans fled and the development of the area stopped. So the people living in this colony, in their 1908 houses, found themselves abandoned by the administrations they once knew and given to the mayorship... which gave them to the railways because it was a big junction there. So from being a nice, oil specialists neighbourhood with American ties, they became one of the most secluded and abandoned places in the city.

Nothing changed since then, but rather it has gone for the worse because the people still living here are inside the city, theoretically, but practically, they still have the same conditions like in 1908, when the houses were built.

I'm the designated guy with the multimedia: with one hand I control my camera, with the other, I have my trusty Osmo Pocket for video recording and somewhere, tied to the backpack it's the 360 degrees camera, a GoPro Fusion that is there in order to capture everything around just in case I miss some important things going on.

It's very sad to see very nice people having to live in the conditions that these people do. Many of them have very good jobs, they still work in the oil industry and they are chemical and process engineers in a vast majority. And it doesn't really matter if they have good salaries which allows them to have a good, personal life as long as the Municipality doesn't help them with the most elementary infrastructure things... like having natural gas distribution in the area for cooking and heating. Ploiești has a vast amount of resources from around the county in natural gas so it's not something science fiction. The city and the surroundings are connected to the natural gas network in a large proportion... close to 98-99%. But there are cases, like this one, which for God knows what reason, the small, inhabited area is lacking 500-1000 meters of pipe that would connect them to something that has become a standard.

I don't think that the guys I'm helping to get elected will be able to change the situation radically, in the next 4 years. If your name is not "Jesus Christ" and you are not still in very good relationship with your father than chances are that whoever you are, you will not be able to do major changes. And that's a political rule we all should keep in the back of our heads when we go to vote. Nobody can really change things from one electoral cycle to the other. But we can always try to push and select the best that there is in the actual political offer. There is no Messiah between us, everybody needs to eat and everybody wants to live so we have to understand that politicians are not magical wizards or something.

But we have to scan them and manage to decide who the fuck is the worse thief and who would also try to change some very extreme situations. In the city I live in the situation is even worse because even though we have a great deal of oil industry (which supposedly generates income) the city has a lot of debts to banks, with very high interests, debts that have been made by the former mayors for building different popular buildings generally. Buildings we didn't really need investment in... or not at the time... so now it's time to pay back the debts, for tens of years and the interests are so high that the budget is not enough to also make some repairs or small investments. We have to find alternative incomes... or fuck the banks, which as a person I would totally do while as a city, I don't know if it would be so wise...

I got involved in this exactly because I need to actively participate and try to have an influence on the people trying to get some public seat. I need to scan them way before I am in the position to vote so I have a clear opinion on them.

And if I can change in good even a small fraction of somebody's life, I guess the effort was worth it.