Election 2005: Martin Kyslun

I’ve done a small amount of research and found this page, published the day before the election – 04/05/2005 – which has a small feature on my favourite 5 vote guy, Martin Kyslun.

Believing tomorrow’s general election to be morally obscene, West Derbyshire constituency candidate Martin Kyslun set up “camp” in front of the Ashbourne War Memorial gates on Tuesday. He stands for the seat purely as a means for the electorate to demonstrate their antipathy and does not want anyone to vote for him.

Calling himself The Count, Mr Kyslun says: “I will not be voting for myself or for any other aspiring Count, but will be placing a large nought on my ballot form with a diagonal cross to mark my opposition to this parliamentary election.

“The nought is in consideration of the marks out of 10 I would give this election. I hope that those who share my antipathy will do the same so the degree of feeling can be gauged.”

Mr Kyslun first stood for Parliament in 1997 inspired by Mr Bob Goodall of Kniveton who stood as the country’s first Independent candidate in 1944 because people were playing petty party politics during the war, which he thought was shameful. “When I first stood in 1997 it was upon Bob’s door that I knocked because it was becoming difficult to acknowledge the honest difference between any of the parties. To have an election implies choice, while that choice is imperceptibly disappearing. In 1997, while not personally being persuaded that new Labour would make things better I could never have imagined that a Labour government could so quickly squander the moral integrity of this country.”

Mr Kyslun points out that politicians have concerned themselves about the low turnout at the last election and in the face of this apparent growing apathy he worries about the legitimacy of their mandate. “Unlike some other democracies we do not have the opportunity to express our antipathy by having a box marked ‘none of the above.’ I think it is indecent to be having an election in the fourth richest country in the world while there is still a large ‘why?’ as to the war.”

That is why Mr Kyslun wants people to show their antipathy by placing a large nought with diagonal cross, on their ballot paper. Asked if he considered Ashbourne Memorial Gates as an appropriate place for this show of opposition to the election, Mr Kyslun said he had every right to set up his stall and had notified the police. “I have to listen to the silent cry of all those lost to democracy and I do not feel they would accuse me,” he said.