Elections jolt, affirm leaders

“THE ballot is stronger than the bullet,” said Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln’s words in 1861 resonate today with the peaceful election of leaders this week hogging radio, print and television headlines worldwide.

Many leaders felt the jolt, including UK’s Boris Johnson, who lost 500 seats in local elections partly due to the Sinn Fein political party. France’s Emmanuel Macron secured another five-year term in office, while newly elected President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos jr will be sworn in as president of the Philippines next month.

Perhaps the hardest knock of the week was on Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. He quit on Monday, for mishandling the economy. The race to the 2023 elections in Nigeria is becoming fiercer and tense. On Sunday, the Lebanese take to the polls hopefully without a bullet being fired.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was booed from the stage at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium when he tried to address workers at a Cosatu Rally. His role in the Marikana Massacre was not forgotten. Rejoicing, though, was his ally Oscar Mabuyane who was elected ANC Eastern Cape chairperson in what could be a boost for Ramaphosa’s second term in office.

Mabuyane said he was bringing strong leadership to the province. So while countries embraced elections without firing a bullet, one leader was bold enough to enter a war zone.

DA leader John Steenhuisen spent six days in Ukraine, the largest producer of sunflower oil, the third-largest producer of corn and among the top five largest producers of wheat in the world.

Steenhuisen warned naysayers that it was easy to think of it as being far away, particularly with everything else going on here in our own troubled country. He advised that this was a war that was going to have severe global economic consequences, whether “you choose to take an interest in it or not”.

Steenhuisen said he had wanted to hear the accounts first-hand from the people. He said families whose children go to bed starving every night, and who have to share slices of bread or tiny amounts of watery porridge, will be South Africa’s victims of the war in Ukraine, because of a resultant global maize and oil price spike.