Election day!

Sunday, June 28th marked two important occasions: international gay pride day and elections! The first passed by without a peep; since, unfortunately, the Cordoba gay scene is super underground and it is highly uncommon to see a same-sex couple walking together on the street, a march is out of the question. The elections, however, were impossible to ignore. For the past month or so the streets have been papered with these handsome faces:


The first, Luis Juez, former mayor of Cordoba and primary guilty party for the mess at city hall mentioned in the previous post (he was the one that gave all his friends and family lifetime jobs and ridiculous perks there), ended up winning the senate race. The second, Eduardo Mondino, lost. He did, however, achieve immortality with an incredibly catchy campaign song that is sung at least once a day in my house.
The vote here is obligatory, which meant that Sunday buses were running free to nearby towns for all the people that had to go vote. It also meant that the sale of alchohol was prohibited starting at 6 pm the night before, in a savvy move to avoid that familiar election day concern, hangover voting ("let's see, I think I want the United Leftist Front party...oooh, my head hurts... oops, I voted for Juez!")
The elections were a big topic of conversation for the last couple of weeks (now supplanted by swine flu), and it was pretty interesting to hear people's attitudes towards voting. Most of my friends made the trek to the "cuarto oscuro" (the dark room, or voting booth), a few mentioning the need to vote in order to maintain a democratic system that is relatively new (the last military dictatorship ended only 26 years ago). A few others said they weren't going to vote, risking a fine, because they were disillusioned with politics.Well hey, it's hard not to be when you see a video of the debate between Juez and Mondino, in which both (during a commercial break that was recorded regardless) accuse each other of being criminals and con men, and neither denies the accusation. Yikes.