Nepomucek Gajic (1910–1992), universally known by his stage and political moniker Nepo Ga, was a Kresimirian performance artist, theatre professor, and highly eccentric independent political candidate. Widely considered the Divine Republic of Kresimiria’s first true performance-art politician, Gajic utilized the federal Assembly elections of 1942 and 1952 not to win power, but as massive, highly publicized, avant-garde theatrical stages to mock the austere authoritarianism of the Revolutionary People’s Party (RPP) and the emerging Blue Dawn establishment.
Running in his home district of District V (Moskiprovac), Gajic consistently secured roughly 4% of the vote—a demographic he affectionately referred to as “The Audience.” His bizarre, surrealist campaigns deeply infuriated the district’s notoriously austere, dominant Senator, Divine Founder Nika Radman. Eventually banned from running for public office by the Vijrje municipal council, Gajic transitioned into academia. As one of the founding professors at Vijrje City University (VCU) in 1956, he covertly fostered a generation of dissident artists, establishing “Nepo Activism”—the art of mocking the state through extreme, literal obedience—as a permanent fixture of Kresimirian student counter-culture.
The 1942 “Turnip Campaign”
Born into a family of railway switchmen in Vijrje, Gajic spent the 1930s working as a moderately successful comedic actor in the underground, unsanctioned cabarets of Sinj.
In 1942, as Chancellor Kresimirovic II violently consolidated his executive veto power and the state relentlessly preached the doctrine of “National Sacrifice,” Gajic launched his first Senate campaign in District V. Recognizing that defeating the entrenched RPP political machine was mathematically impossible, Gajic decided to turn the election into a farce.
At official, heavily securitized RPP rallies where speakers demanded austerity and warned of BRC-21 terrorism, Gajic would silently appear at the back of the crowd dressed in a massive, meticulously crafted papier-mâché costume of a rotting turnip—a deeply offensive, satirical reference to the horrific “Turnip Winter” famine that destroyed the Vosti Empire in 1918. He refused to give speeches, simply handing out small, blank pieces of paper to confused industrial workers. Despite the absurdity (and frequent harassment by the CIA), Gajic captured 4.1% of the district’s vote.
The 1952 “Shadow Campaign” and the Bribe
Gajic returned to politics a decade later for the 1952 election, this time targeting the newly formed Blue Dawn party and its undisputed local boss, Senator Nika Radman. Radman, famous nationwide for his extreme personal austerity and lack of humor, was the perfect foil.
For his second campaign, Gajic utilized the limited funds he had raised from “The Audience” to hire four unemployed actors. Whenever Radman gave a public speech or inspected a railway yard in Vijrje, Gajic and his actors would stand exactly ten feet behind the Senator. In absolute silence, they would flawlessly mimic Radman’s every physical gesture, facial expression, and posture in real time. The “Shadow Campaign” deeply unnerved Radman’s security detail and delighted the bored commuter class of District V.
The “Dog Statue” Extortion
Once the ballots were counted, Gajic had once again secured exactly 4.3% of the vote (roughly 35,000 ballots). In a brilliant piece of political theater, Gajic held a press conference outside the Vijrje municipal hall.
He publicly announced that his 35,000 votes were officially “for sale to the highest bidder in the Assembly.” In exchange for instructing “The Audience” to vote for either Blue Dawn or the Civic Renewal Front (CRF) in future elections, Gajic demanded that the state construct “a statue of a very large, moderately confused dog” in the exact center of the 1931 Memorial Square in Vijrje.
Academic Exile and “Nepo Activism”
The local Blue Dawn authorities possessed no sense of humor regarding the extortion stunt. In late 1955, the Vijrje municipal council, heavily pressured by an enraged Nika Radman and the federal government which was undergoing the Great Purge of 1955, passed a hyper-specific municipal ordinance banning Gajic from ever appearing on a federal or local ballot for “crimes against civic dignity.”
Barred from formal politics, Gajic retreated to academia. In 1956, a year after the establishment of the massive, bureaucratic Vijrje City University (VCU), Gajic was hired as a theatre professor. He eventually became the head of the department, serving until his retirement in 1972.
While VCU was designed to churn out obedient civil servants and accountants for the state, Gajic quietly turned his department into a sanctuary for artistic dissidents. He pioneered and taught the philosophy of “Nepo Activism.” Because the Media Licensing Authority (MLA) heavily penalized explicit criticism of the state, Gajic taught his students to protest through “extreme, literal obedience.”
If the state mandated that students must applaud the Divine Chancellor, Nepo Activists would applaud continuously, without stopping, for three hours, turning state worship into a terrifying, exhausting parody. This unique form of satirical protest remains a deeply entrenched, secret subculture among Kresimirian university students across the Republic today. Gajic died peacefully in Vijrje in 1992 at the age of 82.