Husni Vasir

Husni Vasir has been a fictitious politician in the People’s Chamber of the National Assembly since 1574 AC. He was allegedly the Deputy Minister of Small Enterprises of Prime Minister Lufti Kameel from 1574-1577. According to his official biography, he was born in Albina, Abayad, a fairly rural constituency and is a member of the Rally for Democracy! Party.

Husni Vasir was “born” in 1574 on a napkin in a coffee house down the street from the Palace of the Republic, where to members of the RDP, Rahim Shafi and Rasha Ifat, decided that their recently deceased colleague Abdur Saif who had served as the Shadow Deputy Minister of Small Enterprises needed a worthy successor. He is now a widely-known curiosity within the National Assembly and the Republic Palace, and mostly uses social media accounts as a means of communication.

In 1576, the RDP party newspaper published an article purportedly written by Vasir claiming the discovery of an economic “law,” called Vasir’s Law, that indicated a strong correlation between election results of the RDP in national elections and incomes of fishermen along Abayad’s coasts. The National Assembly’s official website carries an ostensibly serious “biography” and a photograph purporting to be Vasir. In previous versions, the photograph used appeared to be a vintage photo of a man wearing a fez and rounded eyeglasses, seeming very antiquated. The current image as of 1600 shows a middle-aged man wearing a headwrap sitting in a chair, facing away from the camera, in the middle of the empty Hall of Deputies within the Palace of the Republic. Vasir has his own stationery and email address, and issues press releases from time to time. The picture of Vasir at the Palace of the Republic is based on the actor Abdel Burki from the 1560s era of television in Abayad.

This kind of hoax is paralleled elsewhere in Abayad in a number of areas; Umara Nazir is a known (fictional) lawyer from Abayad’s northwest, and Farid Sharaf is a known (fictional) diplomat to Florencia. Vasir, Nazir, and Sharaf each appear to have a long list of publications which have on occasion been published by otherwise reputable sources (legal academic journals, party newspapers, legislative press). Their “work” is likely that of others in the field wishing to foster viewership of their theories through the well-known name.

Biography
The life of Husni Vasir is that of a humble backbencher with a modest life of career steps. His official biography from the National Assembly lists him as a member of Trade Union of Peasants and Fishermen, member of the Friends of Sportsmen (treasurer 1567-1572), honorary member of the Choral Society of the Trade Union for Miners and Plastics Workers. First listed as an official delegate to the Liberal Party convention in Tafari in 1565, Vasir first visited Abayad City in a political capacity in 1567.

In 1567-1569, he wrote a four-part series about the “travel routes of various food-grade species of fish and their aquadynamics” in the Central Journal of the Abayadi Fishermans Research Institute, reprinted in 1571 journal “Fishermans’ Correspondences.” He entered the National Assembly in 1569. Following this time as Deputy Minister for Small Enterprises from 1574-1577, he wrote an article on “Vasir’s Law” in reference to the impact on RDP’s votes received based on the success or decline of fishing profits, which was published in the party newspaper.

His writing continued with an article in the same paper in 1575 titled “The Solution: More market than corruption,” and in 1583 he offered “Ecological data on replacement nets” to be presented at a Symposium in Akhar.

There are several officially approved biographies for Husni Vasir’s life, but there are two that are generally regarded as being the most popular: Husni Vasir, from the Life of a People’s Deputy, and From Fish to Deputy: the Husni Vasir Documentation.

In 1599, Vasir celebrated his 25th anniversary as a member of the National Assembly. In 1608, the Office of the Chancellor under Arun Salid released an official congratulation on the occasion of Vasir’s 80th birthday. He did not show up to the reception held at the Palace of the Chancellor, nor at the celebration held in his honor in his home town of Albina.

Further Appreciation
An official online petition to rename the street in front of the Republican Palace Vasir Street collected over 600,000 signatures in 1609, but has not been officially addressed or acknowledged by the government as of yet.

On Vasir’s 80th “birthday” in 1599, his alleged hometown of Albina opened a small museum dedicated to the politician’s career, providing humorous reflections of his life and political activities.