Through family connections I get a scholarship to a decent university to study law, despite not having the grades to qualify. I graduate and shuffle about different private companies while also working with the tax inspectorate - linked to the police. I meet and marry one of Moscow’s Golden Youth, a woman from within the elite. As I later joke with media - do you think an outsider would be allowed inside without reason? I get in with a centre-left political party. I have a watching brief, part-time, just to see what they’re at. They are trying to create an alternative, it’s interesting and by saying the right things they pay for me to study, part-time.
I begin a Master’s degree part-time and my academic supervisor is not only one of the leading visionaries in progressive tax laws, he is also to the forefront of making my country a better place through social equality and support programmes. He’s useful to me, plus I have access to students. These kids, I write in a blog post, can be easily directed so need direction. I get a warning from the university for a statement regarding a student from the South of the country. I had called him a foul name related to his religion. My supervisor tells me it has no place in our country. I remember this upbraiding. Politics is now my thing.
I’m introduced to some people from the UK, US and EU by a contact in the media. I present my former supervisor’s work as my own and they buy it. I need to do something with the money they send me, so I start up a “youth initiative”. Senior party officials are wary of my actions and realise that while I’m a good organiser, I’m not a politician. Frustrated by this lot of old farts, and with lots of money to get rid of, I am advised to start a separate party. I go to the “youth” again and I buy airtime on tv and radio. I’m cautioned by the party for some of my statements regarding immigrants.
Unable to rise in the party I try to latch onto other movements, particularly far-right parties who wave about Nazi flags and rail against “western values”, inclusivity and immigrants. I get warned by a number of people to be careful, but this is handy, because my watching brief is pleasing all my handlers. My party caution me again. When they refuse to let me be a candidate in a national election I go public with criticism and they go public with my various anti-woke statements, racist abuse and other things that are designed to destroy me. I head to Europe and have meetings with funders in Berlin, Brussels and London. I return with cash and a plan.
I buy shares in big state-owned companies and assist the government in cleaning them up. In the process my share portfolio grows and grows. Honestly, I don’t need the foreign funders anymore, because they demand too much and put me at odds with my old friends from the tax authorities, the ones who have fed me the info I’m using to take down corrupt middle managers and low-level apparatchiks. We’re cleaning up from the inside out. I get cautioned by the authorities for some nasty words about Jewish people and the LGBT community, I’m not anti either group, just some of the folks I know are.
I’m called into a meeting in the capital with a major international pr company. They’re doing a campaign for me to present me as a future leader of the country AND how I’m actually a clever financial genius, well, that they can get me to nail a company, tank their share prices and then buy it on the cheap. I bring my brother on board so he can handle business dealings, leaving me free to do my anti-corruption and political things. I peddle my former academic supervisor’s work around in various forms and use my tax police contacts to get work. I’m able to buy property abroad and am untouchable, I believe.
Online I’m pretty safe and I blog away happily. My bank accounts are filling up as I get reports from genuine whistleblowers - not my handlers from within. A couple I silence because they will cost me money, others I use as my own wins and one person goes to the authorities with an out of joint nose to report me. It goes nowhere, but I get a warning from an official to give credit when it’s due. I’m getting sick of this now, everyone telling me what to do and nobody knowing who I am. The youth organisation died a death after allegations emerged that I insist were designed to discredit me. The 2 people were sorted out anyway. Years are passing and the foreign funders are losing interest. Out of nowhere I’m invited to America to study. Since I am technically living apart from my family, I am free to go.
From one influential academic supervisor to another, this guy moulds leaders. He tells me I need to get offline. I later tell media that I remember very little of this time except that I could feel drawn into something bigger than me. I return with new funding, more funding and make back up with my wife. She is impressed and is willing to go along with it, if I don’t repeat my follies of the past. I tell her those weaknesses are gone as I have a mission. I tell this to our President’s godchild when she interviews me a decade later. Following my training in America, I set up an official fund to fight corruption, against the advice of my domestic handlers because the source of funding will put me at odds with the law. I don’t care, it’s time to gamble. I approach my former party to get on their candidate list for the upcoming elections. I ask a more right wing party if I can join them, offering to self-fund. Neither want anything to do with me. My blogging gets more aggressive. I call for change and say the elections will not be fair. Because I know what’s coming. I know it’s my time.
My former academic advisor is appointed Ambassador to my country and his first meeting is with me. The elections go as predicted, well, worse for the ruling party, but now I go offline. None of the foreign media question my ‘year abroad’ or my business dealings or my less than wholesome assessments of immigrants, Muslims, Jews or LGBT. The latter pair would be wrong as I am not against either, one of my best friends is Jewish. I speak at a protest and am given a choice, pay a $50 fine for public incitement (for calling for an overturning of election results, I mean, come on) or face 2 weeks detention. My wife arrives to pay, but myself and 2 other leaders decide, no, nobody remembers a loser who pays his way out. I sit in detention for 2 weeks.
When I get out my first port of call, as noted by a local-based US journalist, is the US Embassy. I make my first public statement, condemning the upcoming Presidential elections and that I would be prepared to run, if the people want and if I was guaranteed fair play. I lash out at the liberal weaklings who criticise the government for turning me into an offline personality. I am now opposition. After the election I am out protesting again and this time only held for a few hours and released. They’re learning, don’t make me a martyr because I have some pretty big friends over there, and at home. A couple of months later I protest the inauguration of the President, I’m given another couple of weeks to cool my heels and my foreign funders lobby for me to become a “prisoner of conscience”. This time I refused to pay the $45 fine, jailtime makes me a proper opposition activist.
Upon release I’m cautioned by a genuine friend from my old party. I tell in an interview later that he’d been a conduit to the government and my former domestic handlers. I press on. There’s a mood for change in the air and if they can get rid of Gadaffi……But, I messed up by diversifying and getting my family stuck with trouble when my brother gets above himself doing a dodgy deal with a foreign company. And my own misdemeanour is shown up when I get my cut of a deal involving natural resources. My foreign funders cry foul and paid for articles appear in major newspapers like the New York Times and The Guardian saying the government are out to silence me - just as I am about to take off as legitimate opposition. I am now touted as “the opposition”. Ok, so nobody knows me, but I’m opposition.
I get pushed to run for mayor of the capital city. I don’t bother with mainstream tv adverts or even billboards, preferring to use the internet, social media and my youth group remnants. Kids are easy to get going so long as you get them young. Legally, I shouldn’t have been let run, but the government feared looking back internationally and we’d a huge international sports event on that Summer in the city so it would look bad to have protests in the streets. They make sure I am allowed to campaign and we know I’ll lose, we admit it. We say the incumbent has just over 50% and I’m in the mid-20s. I get lots of the youth vote from newly returned students, low hanging fruit and all that, but the overall turnout is appalling. I get just over a quarter of the votes, the incumbent just over half and I cry foul. I demand a recount. Honestly, I’m shocked, as I tell the President’s godchild in an interview years later, that I got so close. I demand support from the Ambassador, he appeals to his bosses, they refuse and he resigns. He has failed. I am facing jail time for my business dealings. My former party have fully disowned me. The funds from abroad have not arrived as promised. I’m separated again from my wife and kids. My anti-corruption fund needs funding, my political career is a dud, my domestic handlers won’t answer text messages or calls. What do I do next?