O'zapft is

Prosit! Santé! Cheers! It's that time again, time for the boozy madness which in the annual Oktoberfest here in Munich. Locals are almost all decked out in their Bavarian finery of lederhosen and dirndls and families are more numerous than shirtless Australians and reeling Americans. Companies in Munich often give their employees time off to enjoy the proceedings and calling in sick with a hangover is an accepted practice. Up to seven million will find their way to the beer tents and funfair in the coming two weeks.

Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome! And that goes, too, for the politicians campaigning in the run-up to tomorrow's election. I am in many ways relieved that I am not entitled to cast a vote.

I have been asking myself what kind of party I would vote for, whether here in Germany, in my homeland or anywhere else? I think the manifesto commitments I would look for... in vain, I admit... are as following:

• Putting forward candidates who have experience of the 'real world', who are not political professionals who have known little of the kind of issues that most of their constituents must deal with every day.
• Seeking to achieve a gender parity which represents the population as a whole, and an ethnic distribution similarly reflecting the demographics of the nation.
• Willing when developing policies to confront the problems of the day to look for examples of best practice which have worked in other countries rather than insisting on seeking new solutions of their own.
• Working for change in a European Union to eliminate waste,  über-bureacracy and pseudo-parliamentarism and promote the original concept of a Europe of the regions giving priority to subsidiarity. 
• Facing the fact that governments elected for four or five year national mandates are increasingly powerless when confronted with global concerns with commercial, financial and even societal agendas which have strategies measured not in years but in decades.

And I won't even begin to think about the complexities of international relations in this dangerous and fast-moving world of the twenty-first century.

I wonder what I would do if I were a citizen of a country with mandatory voting? Would I put my cross on the ballot for none of the above? 

It will be interesting to see what percentage of German voters make their way to the urns tomorrow.

In 2009 just over seventy percent of registered voters participated, out of about sixty-two million that's around forty-three million.

Seven million will flock to the Oktoberfest this year.

Go figure..