Well, let me tell you about myself, my name in BO and for some unpleasant reasons some call me BOA, mistaking me for a reptile, but I see that as an insult, so hopefully no one in this audience will fathom throwing this at me again, or there will be consequences, as there are penalties for defamation, and I am sure you agree with me that stigmatizing a person with snake-like identity is rather slanderous, no matter what the justification.
I want to preempt the question that is on the mind of so many people about my special powers and what it means to use or it to live with it, knowing that it can be abusive or, at the least, engrossing or, perhaps a better word is, absorbing or even obsessive. Call it controlling the ‘beast within’ that has rattled so many folks out there, who wrongly have called me a beast without the slightest notion of my enormous ability to put a leash on it, nearly always. But, we are all humans and apt to make mistake once in a while, giving in to our temptations and emotional ups and downs and I confess I feel no exception and, due to the special circumstances of my upbringing, etc., am kind of proud of my unique ability to exert emotional self-control, with minor exceptions, such as killing my own father who lies here before us and who, until a few minutes ago, was proudly spitting his political venom as he had for his entire adult life. I know how stunned you are at this unseemly sight and are wondering to yourself if you are experiencing a nightmare, but I assure you this is simply a nightmare of reason and the ghastly scene you have just observed first hand in seeing a son biting his father on the neck is a just remedy for a man who put his lover, my mother, to death when she was nine months pregnant and simply wanted an honorable identity instead of a bastard for her child, by betraying her and arranging an “accidental” death for her at a lakeside chalet, hoping that a snake bite would put an end to the trouble she was capable of causing him, a married man who was running for high offices, and never knowing until this day that his own body guard who was to deliver my mother to the deadly snake in the woods actually had a weak heart and ended up delivering me to birth several hours later and then raising me in secret without ever letting me know the truth until his untimely death a few months ago when I begged him to tell me the truth.
You see ladies and gentlemen, I grew up with a lie most of my life, thinking that my parents had died in a car crash and then one day it dawned on me to investigate the details and to my surprise found no reference to that incident in any newspaper and that raised my suspicion, together with the fact, of course, that the older I got the more I came to possess the venomous power that has grown to gigantic proportions by today, so much so that I can declare without the slightest doubt that today I am the most powerful boa constrictor on the face of planet, for I have ripped to pieces the giant boa that was used to kill my mother and have won the awe and admiration of all the members of my species, or shall I say half-species.
I hasten to add, however, just as I said at the outset, that I see a major distinction and no one should entertain the false notion that you are free to depict me as you wish, for I demand the same respect, deference, and authority, from each single one of you as from my friends, whom I have invited here, so look around you and see all the snakes around you that are testimony to my destructive ability, to murder all of you with a whim, but I assure you I am not your enemy and you need not fear for your lives, as long as you do not transgress the important distinction I laid before you a moment ago.
Now, to open a caveat and let you relax your mind a little bit, I first recognized my special ability when I was a little boy of tender age, when I noticed the animals running away from me, specially the cats and dogs and, to my dismay, I have never been able to pet one and a few times I tried as a kid I ended up with bites and scratches, one so painful that I instantly used my tongue to bite back and the poor dog, a lovely poodle, died instantly. My guardian then found out and yet never told me the truth because he knew I would take revenge, on my real father who had murdered my mother and who, for several years, took a special liking of me and took me in as his body guard as was the case today. But, the more I grew up, the less I was able to listen to my guardian’s advise to suppress that special power, and occasionally, such as when I played football in high school, I once or twice used it to my advantage and a couple of times against the neighborhood rough kids when we moved to another city because my guardian was hopelessly thinking that by changing my environment he could somehow change my nature, that grew as my second nature at first and then, slowly but surely, as my split nature, thus turning me into a half-beast, half-man, who bites his enemies to extinction. So, in view of the fact that I am a legitimate inheritor of my dead father’s gift of politics and in every way as qualified as him to lead, I am here before you to seek your support and your steadfast loyalty, promising to never abuse my power or to allow my personal like or dislike of any of you to influence my decisions, especially on the critical choices of life and death, for I assure you that is a gift of god I do not in the slightest interfere in, except in the most dire circumstances and only based on the most dire requirements of justice. That being the case, I now invite you to mingle freely with my invited guests and to greet them with open arms and without the slightest reservations, because the slightest sign of fear ignites a reciprocal fear in them and may provoke unnecessary and tragic results by their sheer nervousness. Let us celebrate this new union of our two species then and look forward to the bright future when politics is no longer ruled by vicious characters who have taken flight of the rule of reason, as if politics is the instrument of lies and manipulation. That era is now over and I declare to the world the dawn of a new era with a new manifest destiny for politics, that promises welfare for all, humans and other creatures alike, a destiny that can be brought about only by our true unity. Thank you and god bless, p(ea)sss.
