Going by indications that they have given so far, we are supposed to have general elections at the earliest by end of June. What boggles my mind and irritates me very much is the fact that hardly any of them is showing the seriousness that should come with an election season.
When they are not rushing to the courts to fight for election dates that should, in all good spirit, be decided in a more mature and sane way, they are wasting time in “jaw-jaw”. Just recently, a leader of one of the numerous parties—I am sure more will spring up once election dates are announced—took me aback with a statement that his party would win 85 percent of the votes “provided the elections are free and fair”.
I am not sure what voodoo research he did to come up with such an impressive electoral victory margin, but what I am clear on is that his party is as visible as a drifting breeze, only murmuring as it strolls by. Of course, he is not alone in this circus; most other parties are guilty of the same deficiency.
None of them has brought out their election manifesto for public consumption and scrutiny. Election manifestos are, in essence, supposed to tell the people what the parties will offer them, in order to convince them to vote for their representatives. They are thus an educational and promotional tool – and should, for example, give the electorate a clear idea how many jobs, clinics and schools they would get if they vote that particular party into power.
There are several possible reasons that could explain the lack of seriousness by the parties to inform the voting public of who they are and what they represent (good or bad). The first one is the traditional tendency to “wait and see”. I am sure all the parties are holding their cards close to their chest until a definite date for the elections is announced.
What I find irritatingly naïve about this is the apparent mentality that elections are about poll dates, and not about the people. Everything revolves around an event, the date of polling, rather than a process, which is bringing development and good governance to the people over the next five years and beyond.
That is dishonesty at its worst as it betrays a tendency to take people for a ride.
The second explanation is that the parties simply have no clue what new and convincing things they will tell the people, hoping that any poorly assembled document pretending to be a manifesto will ritualistically convince the people to vote for a particular formation on the basis of historical bias. In any case, they might say, why bother the electorate with a manifesto when they voted in the referendum only on the basis of knowing the difference between a ‘yes’ and a “no”.
That brings me to the third possible explanation. Our politicians have a history of shepherding voters. They surely must have derived great inspiration from the fact that people voted overwhelmingly to endorse the draft constitution on the Ides of March. That, to them, means that our people are blind ballot casters who will go in any direction once an order is barked, as happened during the referendum.
It this tragic culture is to persist, the absence of manifestos shouldn’t bother them, as there are still those bags of maize seed and fertiliser looted from GMB that they will dangle before the people. In other words, vote buying is, for some of the parties at least, the best manifesto ever invented.
A final explanation is that some leaders are not concerned about the people at all, but only about their own turf. They don’t see any purpose in wasting resources printing documents when the money can be used to buy their groceries or another pedicure and manicure. They are busy searching for how best to entrench their own power to ensure that the largest loot will be theirs in the post-election period, when they hopefully win.
But all these are bad reasons for not explaining to the people what you will do for them if they vote for you. People deserve to know that.
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Post published in: Analysis