President-elect Ülle Madise's inauguration is mere weeks away, meaning that preparations for the new head of state's term are in full swing — most notably in the form of picking various advisers.

The incoming president's advisers seem to be sparking quite a lot of public interest, which is understandable as they hint at the course the president aims to plot. Still, it bears keeping in mind that we will hear precious little about the presidential advisers in the years to come as they form the head of state's support team and it is the president's ideas and actions we need to keep up with instead.

This is to say that presidential advisers are in the public eye when they are picked and when they're replaced. The advisers Ülle Madise has picked are definitely better-known than average and more respected than yours truly.

Paavo Nõgene will become director of the Office of the President, Rainer Saks will serve as security adviser, Vladimir Svet as domestic policy adviser, Harrys Puusepp as communications adviser, Jaak Prints as cultural adviser and Taimar Peterkop as adviser to the National Defense Council. The list is both incomplete and colorful enough to satisfy some and cause other, more skeptical citizens to suspect that the deep state is about to overrun Kadiorg Palace and that the motherland's social democratic screams will be heard coming from there in the future. It could go either way and, fortunately, we don't have long to wait.

The advisers' areas of responsibility, regardless of who ends up handling them, will nevertheless remain traditional, since they have to keep in step with the president's duties. But perhaps it is time to think a little more broadly because, of course, we all like to talk about how important Estonian culture, national defense, truth and justice are, while in our daily lives we deal with just about everything else.

Firstly, the president could perhaps use a deep state adviser. Someone to embody the much-discussed deep state, develop or hide it, as necessary, fend off all relevant attacks, freeing the rest of the adviser pool from having to deal with it and allowing them to concentrate on security, culture, foreign policy, domestic policy etc.

Estonians are a people with a fairly strong interest in the esoteric and since the president in her own way represents the people, she too could use a clairvoyant, astrologer or even a witch in her office. Once the president has exhausted the options provided by law for saying or deciding something, she could turn her gaze to an astrological chart or hold a shamanistic ritual in Kadriorg.

Such activities would help bring the institution of the president much closer to people, and it would be so nice if people all over Estonia, the president and her advisers would all look up to the sky at the same time, noting that Mercury is now in retrograde or some other exciting place, meaning that everything will be okay.

The president also couldn't get by without a poverty adviser. They would not be paid for their work, but would have to pay to do it, and how. The poverty adviser would get poorer by the day, their clothes would be reduced to tatters over their five-year term, they would become emaciated to the point of looking like a skeleton and every new minister and foreign visitor to Estonia would be obligated to meet them, so they would never forget about the less fortunate. The president's perpetually destitute poverty adviser could be posted standing behind the presidential couple instead of the aide-de-camp until they collapse from exhaustion.

This list of advisers could be much longer. For example, if the president had both forest conservation and logging advisers, it would be fun to look at them chase one another across Kadriorg Park like a perpetuum mobile. Like squirrels, only with less bushy tails.

We also cannot ignore artificial intelligence. Someone will have to advise the president on this topic as well and it should be someone from inside the system, which is to say, a robot. As a digital nation at the forefront of all things tech, it would be fitting for the president of Estonia to have the world's first robotic adviser. Not just a virtual one, but one of flesh and blood... I mean metal and processors. The robot adviser could also serve as the president's electricity adviser as they'd often deliver bad electrical shocks.

Ülle Madise will be sworn in as president on October 12. We still have time to hire key advisers to put happiness firmly on Estonians' radar again.

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