Berlin Linke Wins Election, Immediately Assigns Honor Guard to Every Ballot Box in the City

Berlin's Linke party, projected to finish first in Sunday's Abgeordnetenhaus election, has deployed a ceremonial honor guard to stand watch over every ballot box in the capital until the next election in five years.

The guards, drawn from the party's most disciplined volunteers, will rotate in eight-hour shifts, standing at attention beside each of the city's 1,200 ballot boxes, which have been moved from polling stations to a specially built granite pavilion on Alexanderplatz. «We are simply ensuring that the will of the people remains physically present,» said a Linke spokesperson, adding that the party had ordered 3,000 dress uniforms and a marching band to accompany the boxes on their daily procession around the city.

The CDU, which had hoped to finish first, has responded by assigning its own honor guard to the city's recycling bins, arguing that «if the Linke can guard paper, we can guard paper.» The Greens have announced a rival guard for bicycle racks, while the AfD has stationed a single volunteer outside a closed polling station in Marzahn, where he stands alone, saluting.

By Thursday, the granite pavilion had become a tourist attraction, with school groups filing past the ballot boxes as if they were relics. The Linke has begun selling commemorative postcards showing the guards at attention, and the party's mayoral candidate has announced that the first act of the new government will be to declare the pavilion a permanent monument to «the eternal vigilance of the ballot.»

12Views