A/N: I would like to apologize in advance for my bastardization of political systems everywhere. --; This idea came to me in ten minutes, and I quickly wrote it down before I forgot it, and… here it is.
Historians looking back on this particular chapter of Amestrian history shake their heads and laugh at the absurdity. They would point to the archaic laws under which the newly formed parliament still operated as the culprits. History teachers sigh as their students giggle and jokingly scribble a new title into their textbooks when it is thought that their teachers aren't looking; under the "Seven Days Furher" they write "Every Dog of the Military has it's Day".
The story begins in the tiny eastern city of Liore; just getting back onto its' feet after devastating civil disorder, it's citizens have only just begun to trickle back from the other cities to which they had fled. The year is 1921, and Amestris is holding it's first general elections.
Now, the people of Liore had a problem; there was only one candidate to choose from to elect to represent their populous. He was a noted misogynist, problem gambler, and public drunkard. However, he alone met the criteria to become an elected member; he owned sufficient land in the area (a large old building, a rumored – but unproven – brothel that hadn't been destroyed by shrapnel and bullet fire as most of the remainder of the city had been), he had served the required five year military service (he was said to be one of the ones who had been firing at the crowds in the aforementioned time of civil disorder), and he had the money to put forth to actually run for office.
The citizens of Liore were unhappy; they understood that none of them met those criteria. Very few of the citizens were in the army (due to the general hatred felt towards the military establishment, especially after the Ishballan massacre having occurred in the desert barely a few days ride from their city), almost none owned any of the land they lived on (their property had mostly been nationalized by their church, dedicated to the Great Sun God Leto and governed by his prophet Cornello), and the members of the community were almost universally poor (as most of the money they did have went to pay for reparations to the ruined infrastructure of the city). In a word, they were stuck; those eligible for voting knew that they didn't want this ex-military brothel-frequenting drunkard representing them, but they had no alternative candidate to offer.
It was then that Edward Elric, popularly known as the People's Alchemist, walked into town. He and his younger brother (who was nearly unrecognizable as he had given up his armor fetish) had been escorting a revolutionary ex-priestess of Leto, Rozé, and her young son back to their birthplace. Having the authority and moral righteousness to do so, he kicked the candidate out of the running for office (having "discovered" on a casual inspection that the man's old mansion house was, indeed as rumors said, an illegal brothel), and had him arrested. However, the position the city was now in wasn't much better; they now had a grand total of zero candidates to represent their region at the General Assembly.
It was then that Rozé proposed an idea. Major Edward Elric had been in active military service since the age of twelve; at twenty-two, he had more than the required military duty. He also owned (inherited after the death of his father) a plot of land where his house had once stood in Risembool, a tiny collection of farms in the far north of Liore's jurisdiction (the provinces were grouped together not in geographical range, but in approximately equal population sizes; as such, many of the smaller eastern cities had been clumped together to form the county of "The Greater East"). He also had a State Alchemist's stipend, and could easily afford the money one had to put up to enter the candidate race.
It is said that Major Elric only agreed to become a candidate after plied with small amounts of alcohol and after being subjected to the combined "puppy eyes" of his younger brother and the majority of the population of Liore.
It should come as very little surprise, then, that after the elections the following week, Major Elric won with a majority (over no-one) of 3,583 votes. His first words upon being sworn into the office were: "Well, damn."
The next month the countrywide elections were held; the candidate for Fuhrer (a purely non-military title, now; that was what the Defense Minister was for) was to be selected from the collection of elected ministers by the populous.
Many people who hadn't been interested in voting for their regional minister, who had no interest in politics, perked up when they heard that the Fullmetal Alchemist was in the running for Furher. They hadn't heard of any of these other pompous politicians (except, perhaps for that Flame Alchemist guy), but The People's Alchemist they knew!
Said alchemist organized no rallies, printed no posters, and only entered into public debates with other members of the new parliament when told to. In one memorable debate, though, he punched another member of parliament for calling him short when an adjutant had to get him a chair to stand on so he could see over the podium. Many of those who followed politics and who attended the open-air talk called his stand "refreshing".
Furher Edward Elric won with a record-breaking seventy-three percent majority over the collective assembly of twenty-five other ministers, including his former superior officer, Roy Mustang.
Edward Elric was sworn into office in full military regalia as the first democratically elected Furher of Amestris, to the cheers of thousands as they crowded the streets of Central City hoping to get a glimpse of him.
The turnaround came less than a week later with his stand on Xingian issues. Most notably, how he accidentally annexed the country of Amestris to become Xing's fifty-first province by sleeping with Emperor Ling the following week (how was he to know that it was traditional for the Emperor of Xing to take the leaders of all defeated territories as his concubines to finalize the addition to the state?).
It went completely downhill from there. After witnessing very violent protests in the street, Furher Elric chose to abdicate from his position of power before those who had elected him in the first place lynched him.
And Edward Elric became known for being the shortest reigning leader of Amestris in history thus far; the Seven Days Furher
After he had been chased from the office, he was replaced by his defense minister Roy Mustang, who went on to become one of Amestris' longest-reigning and most successful Furhers – after he sorted out the issue of declaring independence from Xing.