Cadre deployment set to be rife in elections
MOST believe elections are coming sometime in May, but realists are certain that some form of Fifa World Cup or Afcon is in fact coming in May or so. The only difference is that the competition will not be about kicking a ball, and an effort to kick it past the opponents’ goalkeeper more times than your opponent passes it over your goalkeeper. It will be about how many people in the country are charmed by whom.
While participants in real football competition prepare by hard training, practice and development of tactics, perhaps studying opponents; participants in the coming competition in our country prepare by lying consistently, repeating lies over and over such that those lies become truth in the minds of ordinary people. Bribery - supplying food parcels, free drinks, hard cash etc - appeals to basic instincts.
These contenders need no training ground, but lots and lots of money for their preparation and those who have no money may as well just stay at home. Businesses and the moneyed individuals will make investments where the expected returns are an influence on decision-making once a certain group assumes power to carve advantage for their core businesses.
Very few citizens who will queue at polling stations will be there to elect the best people to run the country, to express their loyalty to contesting political parties or individual.
However, these people are often driven by love for political parties. They do not regard the other groups as part of the system, neither do they recognise or accept that such rivals are also (in theory) concerned with the welfare of the country.
Those in the offices of the contesting groups (political parties) are mostly there to secure income and get access to opportunities that can be created out of the responsibility to cater for the needs of the country. The interest is not in the provision of the needs, but what can be siphoned in the process of providing for the needs.
Those who provide services are not engaged on the basis of their efficiency, but rather on the preparedness to make it worthwhile for the official dealing with the engagement, alternatively direct benefit of the official or relative or friend or colleague in the group, whether they know anything about the service or not.
When everything is over and a winner has been declared, people will go to Parliament to represent the interests of their political party. In Parliament they vote in accordance with their party’s instructions, they report back to the party and feel no obligation to report to the masses. They may as well just sleep on the benches in Parliament. It does not seem that they need to digest and evaluate what is discussed, they are there because the party deployed them.
KENOSI MOSALAKAE Houghton