Η Εκλογή Φειδία (Ντοκιμαντέρ / Ελληνικά)

a YouTube prankster has been elected to the European Parliament with

19.4% of the votes phus panu a 24-year-old influencer from Cyprus ran

as an independent and has managed to emerge as the most voted candidate in the country ever does this mean that

YouTubers and Tik tokers will rule the world in the

future so this guy just got elected into European Parliament oh this this is great I can't

believe that this is real life but I will try to explain you the story it all

started 6 months ago when I received a call from a politician here in Cyprus

and he was saying FAS you need to run as a member of the European Parliament I

was very angry in the beginning because I didn't find any reason not to do it I

hate politics here in Cyprus I think it's very oldfashioned I think the

system is kind of corrupted and the parties just do stuff to help themselves

and not the people so I thought that my campaign will be useful for Cyprus and I

thought that it would be very cool for like YouTube history for someone to get

really elected so I took the decision to do it I was so annoyed with him I was

like don't do it I will stop working with you if you do it because we are working together and I was so passionate

annoyed with this decision I dis encouraged him and asked him to stop not

to try because he will fail the whole family didn't receive it very well they

were not happy with it but I didn't care obviously after I announced it to my

family it was time to start and to be honest I had no clue what I'm going to

do when I have ideas generally I call the people that they know more about

this and I asked them questions so this is what I did six months ago I received

a phone call from a guy Nam FS I didn't know much about him and he asked me a

lot of questions about how the European Parliament work and if it's possible for someone independent to elected as member

of European Parliament I told him that it's impossible no one achieve to elect

this independent member especially in Cyprus but I didn't know about fos lugas

said that don't do it YouTube is better job you're making more money there so I

took this as a challenge let's say the first TV appearance that I did people

didn't take it seriously let's say that he announced his candidacy wearing three

ties and his underwear so we thought he was joking we were trying to figure out

if he was serious or if it was another challenge I thought that he was looking

at this whole thing as a game he was not serious I thought about that he was

going to do it went viral but it didn't receive the response that I wanted like

they didn't took me seriously at all and that was a problem so I needed to do

something to convince them that no guys this is serious and how I was going to

do that my idea was to convince a party to allow me to run on their ballet he

was in discussions with political parties in order for him to to grab into

a a movement or an organization I had a meeting with three parties and two of

the parties rejected me they didn't took me seriously but the green party here in

Cyprus actually took it seriously okay he's an environmentalist he he's a

vegetarian it would be the the best party that he could join kind of I I

preferred him to be an independent myself he was more leaning towards being a part of the Coalition of the greens we

had long discussion with Anna I was like at one time I wanted him to go with a

party because he had a more chance if he was with a party that point the green party said yes to my request to run with

them so after the party said yes I put it as a poll on Tik Tok people of Cyprus

what do you want me to do you want me to go with the green party or you want me to go as an independent I remember we

went early in the morning in his village and uh we made a nice video in the

natural environment and fidas asked the people what do you want I want you to choose and people 70% chose him not to

join the green Coalition and 30% yes so I was relieved and I think fidas deep

inside him he wanted not to become a part of it he wanted to be an an independent when FAS make that poll that

move win me because this is the Democracy 2024 this is the Democracy to

ask the people on every time for every for everything and people have opinion

for all if it's correct if is wrong this is the Democracy I really like the fact

that the people decided for FAS what they want him to do because they were

part of it and they they feel that and we feel that we are part of the decision

making that FS is doing I didn't know how to create a campaign but what I

thought inside me it's not to promote myself and just do a regular campaign I

wanted to give value to the people and if I gave them value they will vote for

me so I started giving them value in a lot of different ways the first and a

huge way was starting a podcast pevious podcast was like I think the highlight

of his campaign many people think that it's about videos on Tik Tok but in the

podcast you could see that fidas has knowledge so he he would talk about AI

or talk about philosophy talk about politics deep philosophy but using this everyday language so the guest had also

to use this language and they they used to appreciate because they would understand everything even about difficult subjects he managed to

capitalize the the format of podcasting meaning he created long form episodes

and then he was chopping it off and redistributing it into all platforms Tik Tok YouTube and slowly from zero

followers that we had in the beginning in our Instagram our Facebook our Twitter we started growing rapidly the

podcast in 2 months started becoming the biggest podcast in Cyprus and I met so

many people here in Cyprus I learned a lot of things through a podcast and the most beautiful thing was that not only

me but we were given free value to so many people here in Cyprus and they

learned Among Us after this started a conversation between the Young Generation and the old generation the

older generation that they knew most of his podcast they didn't know about his English

prank entertainment Channel people maybe heard of fidas through the conversations of of their children and then they would

go ah you know I now I know who this FAS is because I I watch this podcast so it

brought a conversation within family so they discovered that they have something common fidas and they were discussing

about fidia podcast and about fidia shorts about fidia Liv Stream So it became like a unique bond in the

families I learned in fia's podcast about the ucation that education is the

First Foundation of everything is the key for everything fidas is very radical

and very angry about the education system the one thing that he was very

clear and firm and sure that he can promise to people was about education very determined that as a politician his

first goal was to change the education system because fidas feels that is totally wrong it's very

counterproductive it makes people hate learning and because FAS like learning he's very emotional about this fidas

believes that the education system must make people first of all enjoy and and love learning in order to become long

life Learners not just to pass the exam and that's it I'm a student I'm going to school and I know what fidas stand for

schools and that stuff and I agree with him because like schools is like prisons

actually you don't learn anything if you are interested to something you will learn it but most of my subject I'm not

interested to it and as many time as I do it I will not learn anything I will

forgot it in a week or in a month and I will not remember anything another way that we Tred to give value to the people

was by teaching them about the European Union teaching them about politics and

teaching them about corruption here in Cyprus for the first time fidas was the

only uh candidate that actually explained to people how to vote I mean he did the tutorial that everyone

believe that people should know but fidas actually did help a lot in making the people understand how to vote it was

like very interesting a lot of 15 years old 16 years old guys my age they was

like talking about FAS talking about politics I didn't knew anything about politics but because fidas was like part

of the election I learn everything and I'm like 16 years old I don't vote but now I am I'm interested in politics and

when I become 18 for sure I'm going to vote but I don't think the democracy is the best but let's don't talk about

this okay I will tell you a secret guys in all these videos that were educating people about stuff it was not my ideas

and I didn't know the stuff and my teacher was reading and coming up with the ideas and he was coming here he was

teaching me about a topic and then after he was teaching me for 20 minutes I was filming the video to explain and teach

people which kind of proves that that you don't need to know everything you just need to have the right people

around you I was always there so it's like I'm a part of fas I cannot decou

myself I was always there from the first moment of the idea till now I I cannot

found it a different role than fidas in the decisions of course fidas was the face of the whole thing but I was always

there and my sister from wanting to quit she became the biggest believer in the

whole compan pain it's crazy the 180° shift that she did at the beginning

when he came up with a swimsuit Etc I thought it was just for a challenge and he will try and do whatever but when I

could see that he could find problems and go and solve them and uh take expose

them and that he has power and he can actually make uh influence that was a

turning point from me that uh this is serious laros and Anna mostly

they was spending all of their time away I was seeing Anna in the house all day working or from the morning toight and

he was like don't have much sleep like 3 4 hours and wake up again so I give them

maybe the most credits about FIA success the third way that we tried to give

value to the people it was by making Vlogs of my day I was sharing every

problem that I found along the way basically I did what I do best to be vulnerable and tell stories on the

internet about my life and that caus for other people to get invested in this

journey personally I've been studying the voters Behavior over the past 25 years it's very important for us to

understand the behavior the incentives and the motives that will drive the

voters to exercise their voting right so what we've seen with fds okay the direct

uh dialogue or an interaction between the voters and the candidate in an open

and transparent manner definitely we've seen that this is what today the people

or the future voters will be looking for it's an evolution of the traditional political system into something more new

something more fresh and something that people voters actually are seeking for I just sent him one message hello FAS I am

39 years old and I want to vote you because you are the Democracy if you

want to ask something that people you can do it even on Tik Tok or on YouTube

and this is the Democracy on 2024 the people speaks every day and not

every 5 year when is the elector continue like that you are the Democracy

we are behind you I haven't voted for 20 years you know after seeing so many videos of of him and so many actions

that he was doing I thought yes I'm going to vote um fivia I'm not going to

vote anyone else in Cyprus not everyone is allowed to vote above 18 you need to

go and register which is a problem but also when you have a problem there is an

opportunity so basically in Cyprus you need to go and register to be part of

the Electoral role which is the only country in Europe with Ireland that they

have this Rule and in Cyprus is even more complicated if you are above to 25

you need to go to two different places get authorization and then go to another place and submit your papers to register

without really knowing uh but we assume that the people that will vote for us

are going to be the people that are not registered to vote and the goal was to

break the record in the whole history of Cyprus of the most people that got

registered to vote so I started a journey of going to universities of

going to schools I was going to football matches I was going to the malls and I

was just writing countless of people to register to vote one cool way that we

thought to convince more people to register to vote it was a bit crazy one it was to run across the whole country

and wear a t-shirt registered to vote it was kind of symbolic because in my

country we have a problem it's divided it's occupi Ed at the half part of

Cyprus by the Turkish Army uh so I started from the occupied side and I

finished in the free site so it was 80 kilm I was saying please don't do it

started from like the halfway 40 kilom is more than enough do a marathon don't

do like double a marathon I thought he's not going to do it then I saw a video of

him saying it in the social media and then I was like okay this is happening because when he announces something he's

doing it for sure so we did it we live streamed the whole thing when we cross

in the the South part people started to join running with him some of them run

like 20 kmers with FAS people would inform us don't go from that road they would change our route because they knew

a better route to pass from another route a lot of information was very interactive the whole thing though he

was very tired he didn't stop and I was very worried because I thought he

wouldn't H make it and uh at the end of the marathon I was running with

him and he did a very good job this showed to people that I'm not just

sitting from my house and telling you guys I'm here suffering this is important for me and when you ask like

people why are you going to vote for fidas back then they said that because

he ran across C Tru and he is willing and determined to do whatever it takes

and finally after this 80 kilom we achieved to break the record guys from

the 15,000 that was the previous record in Cyprus history we achieved to have

26,000 people to register to vote this is a big W for democracy and this is one

way that we gave value to the people because this is important to register to vote after attempt the government now is

thinking to simplifying much more the procedure of getting registered and you

might be wondering why I'm wearing this clothes I will explain in a bit but the next big day in the whole campaign was

the actual day that I officially put my candany for the European Parliament the

day before we had like a conversation you need to go there with nice clothes

not with a short or and then when I saw him like with the

nicest clothes and next to my father H I was feeling very emotional people in

Cyprus were commenting on this so much because I was wearing this as well in my candes I was wearing kind of a costume

and people are not used to seeing me with this formal clothes and they enjoyed it and they really liked my

looks and now we move to my speech the speech was based in the expression I'm

tired fibia was saying I'm I'm tired of XY I'm tired of and he was representing

a lot of people in Cyprus some people smoke after I'm tired I'm tired tired

how can you be tired you are like 24 years old but people that 24 years old they are old enough to be tired of this

kind of politics that they cannot understand but they know that they are influential for their life that so so a

young person like the can be tired imagine the old people of Cyprus how they identify themselves with this arti

because they are of this kind of politics a lot and I feel at that day with that speech it was the start of the

campaign because For the First Time people took us seriously after this they were inviting us to do TV panels against

our opponents and this was so much fun I

cannot describe you guys I was so much enjoying this part of the journey

because I was going there with the other candidates and were wearing suits and

ties and they were talking very robotic and you understood half of the stuff that they said and I was just like this

excited happy about life and it was a good contrast between just a simple

person that is happy and excited about life and just robots so people saw this

contrast and they really liked it the other candidates that was so scared of

fivia you know everyone was so angry with him that were attacking him and um

that's a message of being scared of course it's a py it was an independent

candidate 24 years old with no clue about politics so yes I mean uh

political parties that they're counting 100 years old 50 years old 80 years old

were like where did you come from what do you want from us they were saying

what do you know about the European parli I was say nothing but I'm going to learn and people in a way appreciated

the honesty more than they appreciated in other candidates having positions and

having knowledge it's it's a peculiarity in Cyprus because we are speaking a hard dialect of Greek and fidas was not only

using the hard dialect he was also talking to the colloquial Argo of people

it's the language that everyone's understand politicians are speaking like

um a w language that uh they are far from people they speak like fluent Greek with

nice words but that people don't understand fidas was real and also use this beloved

everyday language that everybody loves I saw politicians in panels they were speaking academic the previous day and

they when they realized that is catchy for the people to hear the cio's dialect

they're starting to speak like like him other politicians told me to go and make events in Cyprus to talk with the people

and this is what I did but we did it in a cooler way when I was going there I was started live streaming the talk

let's say 100 people showed up but hundreds of thousands of people join the

live stream to see what I was doing so that's where the leverage comes from we

did something in front of a 100 people and we used this to have a live stream for 40 50,000 people to come in the live

stream and see what we are doing and not only that after the live stream we are cutting clips and we are uploading short

form content on Facebook on Tik Tok on Instagram we did one thing but the result was much bigger and this I think

is the secret formula here because we use the social media in the Right Way

live stream it's big because in live stream people can see you how you are

they can see you making mistakes it's not edited and people were very interested in it because they saw the

reality from my 20 years experience in digital marketing we see that in order to get campaigns going you need to pay

for them but FAS did that purely organically without spending a single

Dollar in digital marketing advertising and organically it's really hard to do it because you need really amazing

content that's authentic that is up toate imagine if you are a politician you go to the TV you get zero comments

you put a bill bought out you get zero comments but when you put things online

you get instant feedback he would criticize the traditional non- inspiring ways of

campaigning of the other politicians so he would go outside show these are the

Billboards of the politicians they are all looks the same they just have a picture they just have a catchy kind of

motto next to them that means nothing and fidas will use this as a way of gaining popularity whenever people were

were watching yet another billboard of the same politician would think positively about fidas would remember

fidia critique and would feel negative about the guy who put the

[Music]

billboard my biggest problem in the whole campaign was this I didn't know if

I was doing well or if I was doing horrible we we were clueless maybe people like

what we were doing but they were not going to vote for us even when they start the first polls they wouldn't show

fidas zero like no fidas is there but in the PO they always had others and you

would imagine that maybe we are casting among the other to not be able to have

feedback if you are doing well or not with PS it's something that it really

hurt me I was so excited to see the new polls about the elections and I I was going on the TV to see them and it's

like they showed us not existant and I was like it

hurts maybe at the PO at the beginning maybe people didn't want to say who's

going to vote for we're in Cyprus we're in a very very small island everyone

knows everyone so sometimes some people they don't say what they're going to

vote 3 weeks before the elections something could happen finally

the polls were showing us that we have around 5% of the vote which this was a

miracle because people for the first time in the whole campaign felt that

this is possible I think the politicians got him seriously the last 20 days when

the polls started to show 6% 8% they said uh-oh something is

happening here the other parties were saying really kind of nasty things about

us that I'm stupid I'm a joke and this led to the best idea that we had in the

campaign this was not my idea this was my teacher's idea we thought from the

beginning we understood that this is strategic move and whenever a politician was attacking fidas we would cut it

short clip and we would upload it in Tik Tok and Etc so we understood and we were

right people would take the side of fidas and it was a very successful move the comments were going crazy come on

guys this is just a 24 years old kid that is trying to help and all you guys

politicians that you want younger people to be involved with politics now that it's finally happening you are attacking

him so this was amazing for our campaign this is what made the final push so in

the last two weeks it was like a snowball effect the volumes of the

followers were growing a lot and very fast the volumes of the people doing

videos about fidas and like that they openly support him I was supporting full

of him full of him with all my heart and I I didn't regret it not a single minute

about it fidas was on Tik to every single day he was in our kitchen our

bedrooms and our couches he was everywhere where all the parties have like teams and every person in every

corner in every neighborhood and fidas had nobody but he had the word uh the

kids working with their parents people speaking in their job about it he was a

a topic in many conversations people were trying to make convince other

people to vote for FIA so without him knowing people were doing all the work

that parties are paying people to do you can say that in Cyprus in this election

children got the right to

vote and not just once five six votes grandmother grandfather mother Aunt

Uncle neighbor it would have been a master move if we would have done this on purpose but it became natural that in

Cyprus it became popular during that time that every child had to persuade

their parents and their the adults around them to vote for fidas people came to me and tell me vote FAS vot FAS

and I was like I'm only 17 so I can't so I told my parents to vote for him I told

my grandparents to vote for him everybody I knew I know friends that did

this actually they were like trying to convince their parents that maybe they was in a party or something they

convinced them to to vote fidas I think the teenagers and the kids is what made

fidas to be elected the day of the elections finally came and I went to

vote with the whole family it was a very nice moment that time all together all

the family so it was an important moment that day I went to vote for the first

time in my entire life yes I never voted before because I felt that nobody

represents me I was not happy with what I was seeing in the politics and I didn't want to be part of the game that

I find as a joke but it was time for me to vote for my first time it was an amazing experience all the TV stations

were waiting outside for me to give another comments on my first time voting

and I was excited I was very excited we heard some rumors before the results of

the elections were announced that I'm doing very well the companies that they do the exit polls they are outside the

voting thing and they ask people what did you vote so we started to realize that it

wasn't 6% it wasn't 7% it wasn't 9% it was more on the day of the election the

number of Voters that were willing to vote for fidas had increased drastically it's important to know that we were

writing down the actual voters per hour we've seen like until 2 or 3:00 fia's

percentage was around 12 or 13 and then in the afternoon as the time was going

by we've seen that a lot of Voters went to vote for PS I didn't believe the

roomors 100% I wanted to see it with my eyes so I went to the TV station to hear

the results and also get my reaction live on TV when I was sitting to the

chair and I saw the results that I was the most voted person in the country and

it was sure that I got elected to represent my beautiful country in the

European Parliament it was amazing it was

truly I'm about to cry that because we work so hard guys for 6 months my

friends my family and so many people believe in this was very beautiful to

see that we actually got elected I have no words guys it was very

emotional at that time and to now tell the story to you guys it's just a

pleasure because I still can't believe that this is

real I mean 71330 votes it's a

record in the Cypress history no one else no one else did that before he

managed to achieve something that never happened in Cyprus and uh fidas now is a member of

European Parliament one of the six cot members in European Parliament so he's

my colleague it was a huge shock I mean he managed to overpass political parties

that contributed in the modern history of Cyprus and there comes a kid but he

started doing social media content 5 years ago and gets 20% a fifth of the

votes my God if that's not impressing then what is I left with my car alone

and I went to see the sunset by myself and I felt the most beautiful emotions I

ever felt in my life I felt fulfilled I felt happy I felt

excited and I felt a a big wave of Hope

about the future the future of the world and the future of Cyprus and after I announced that we're

going to celebrate in the capital of Cyprus nikosia I went to celebrate with

the people and thousands of people were waiting for me

it was something unreal guys I went there and people were treating me

there so much happiness so much excitement it's crazy

I felt so much energy and I started shouting to everyone I love you I love

you I love you in Greek

AAS we've been studying the the behavior of the voters on the 9th of June on the

day of the elections and we've been uh monitoring and writing down the results 55% of those who have voted fidas have

stated that fidas is the right candidate who could represent our Island Cyprus in

the European Parliament so a 40% of those who have voted PDS have stated

that their vote it's a vote that wants to go against the system to show their dis approval of the way that the

political system in Cyprus the political parties or the institutions in general

uh behave and have shown uh evidence over the past years the other party

leaders were shocked they got a slap in their face and I didn't give them the

slap the people of Cyprus they gave them the slap and they said to them wake the

up stop serving the party's interest and start working for the

people of Cyprus and because these types of people they don't understand by words

you need to shake them so the biggest win in Cyprus from this story is the

slap that they gave the people of Cyprus to the parties through me and now the

parties are shocked they're trying to see what went wrong they're trying to improve and hopefully they will change

their behavior the bottom line is a people like real people and politici

should know that they should be as real as possible as transparent as possible and work as hard hard as possible and

prove it to people be politicians of the new era not of the old era because the old era is already gone so this for

instance fidas has came and opened the door to a new transparency that what

you've see direct communication he's going to be able to take his voters with him and explain

everything and for me it's a new era of democracy we see a promising future of a

more direct democracy Maybe with more independent people leading the way like

history told us that when the mean of communication change politics and regimes change so if we go back like

5,000 years ago the invention of script enhanced the paradigm shift from the

older more hunter gatherer Centric egalitarian direct democracy of the

tribe towards the appearance of a more tyrannic despotic regimes like monarchies this would be impossible to

happen if there were no written records and written scripts so KS were enabled because of the communication through

written languages after this liberal representative democracy was enabled through the mean of communication of

printing press and radio and television Etc now we are living in the time of a

new way of communication the interactive way through the social media and again I hope we will have a paradigm shift

towards a new way of politics towards a more direct democracy and Now ladies and gentlemen I

am a politician I don't even believe it myself but it's a

reality and it's exciting I'm excited to learn and improve and represent not only

the people of Cyprus but whole Europe and before I close I just want to

say I love you