Elections? What’s that?

Posted by Anita KALMANE Mar 1st, 2009 | 3 responses

In the last weekend me and my collegues from European Parliament Information Office (EPIO) in Riga, where I’m currently having a traineeship, were presenting EPIO and European Parliament Elections 2009 (EE09) in the School Fair 2009.

A brief info what is the School Fair - it’s an annual exhibition in Riga, the biggest exhibition where pupils, students, teachers and all other interested people can find information about the study possibilities in Latvia and abroad. It was the first time when EPIO took part and we were mostly informing youth about the traineeship possibilities in the European Parliament, our library in the EU House in Riga as well as the upcoming elections.

Of course, I should have already been prepared to the fact that very few Latvians know what will happen on 6th June and some even don’t know that they can vote in the elections in general, but still… It was a big surprise to hear similar questions over and over again:

  • “I am not really interested in politics. What did you say, what is European Parliament?”
  • “And who will be voting in the elections? What did you say?? Me???”
  • “So I need to go to Brussels to vote?”
  • “And who elected the MEPs five years ago?”
  • “So I need to vote for one of them?” (a question after giving them the leaflet about the current Latvian MEPs)
  • “For who do you suggest me to vote?”

These are just some of the questions I can now remember. During the last 4 days we were showing the people presentations about the elections (e.g., why should they vote and when will they be able to vote) as well as giving them stickers, pens and other information about the elections, always reminding the magical day - 6th June!

Already now we are able to find all the information about the elections in the official EE09 website, but soon even bigger PR campaign for the elections will begin in all EU Member states, when we’ll see visual ads, posters and other information. I really hope that more and more people will notice and remember that exactly they will be the ones to choose our representatives in the EP, not the government of each country as some might think…

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3 Responses to “Elections? What’s that?”

  1. Veiko Spolitis says:
    April 7, 2009 at 15:41

    Thank you Anita, great blog!

    Answers to your questions are rather indicative, and just out of curiosity, what was the number of people you interviewed?:)

    Keep up your good job!!

    Veiko Spolitis

  2. Anita KALMANE Anita KALMANE says:
    April 7, 2009 at 19:03

    Thanks for the nice words, Veiko! I didn’t interview anybody, they were just asking questions in our stand. Don’t remember exact number of people, but quite enough to make the conclusion that the society isn’t informed enough about the EE09. :(

  3. Veiko Spolitis says:
    April 8, 2009 at 05:12

    Allright, I see:) There is a lot to be done on this uphill struggle and we shall try to do the BEST with our SCP team. Ar sveicieniem,

    VS