Leseho Manala writes:
The 2016 local government elections may be a disappointment if the current quality of contestation persists.
The costly use of stadiums as platforms to hype up the electorate without much content could, in the Auditor General’s words, be termed wasteful and fruitless expenditure of money, the electorate’s time and trust.
The parties may rue the opportunity missed if they continue their political gimmicks which are devoid of content, and only reveal their infantile weaknesses at a time when the electorate needs a saviour from debilitating social and economic challenges. The regret may be monumental for others when the deeply aggrieved electorate makes them pay for continuing to regard them as voting fodder, disregarding their concerns and a seemingly lack of concern of their plight.
The campaigns’ absence of robust, engaging, informed, articulate and intelligent ideas and debates is concerning. This at a time when the country’s glaring need for transformation and development is surprisingly worsening and worrying. Instead, the parties opt to go on sprees of expensive and wasteful showmanship and grandstanding on who draws the biggest crowd at stadium rallies.
The electorate is undoubtedly left wondering if they still care or remember how, not so long ago, their voting power replaced an abominable system with a democracy. One that, at all times, demands those they entrust with power to earn it through accountability, trustworthiness and people-centredness.
If wise, the parties should be endeavouring to prove their commitment to delivering substantive and measurable change with guarantees for progressive and sustainable benefits on material, social and economic conditions. This, in relation to the daily bread and butter, peace and tranquillity, fairness and equality issues required from a leadership that is transparent, fair, truthful, worthy and deserving of their continued support.
Showmanship, hurling insults and innuendo at rallies is foolhardy and of no concern to the electorate. Such conduct is only a means to political suicide, especially after pledging to an election code of good conduct and accountability which the electorate will also use as an assessment of the parties.
The parties should be cautious of the electorate remembering advice given, not so long ago, by former president Nelson Mandela to vote out any transgressing government.
The voters will certainly use this power after being abused, having had the middle finger hurled at them and when feeling abandoned in their struggle for transformation, development, peace and equality.
Past track records, without a long-term commitment to tackling grinding and life-threatening poverty, will count for nothing with an electorate aggrieved by filthy opulence, continued greed and the naked rape of the economy by a few, and the free looting of the fiscus by others, including those in power wanting to catch up with the the opulent lives of politicians.
All the electorate wants from the rallies are concrete answers to festering and debilitating inequality, racial tension, crime, unemployment and a failing economy, justified protests by young and old, poor education, substance abuse, teenage pregnancy, Afro-pessimism and xenophobia and the resurgence of HIV/Aids among the youth.
They want to see evidence of a resolve to stamp out the corruption that denies them the resources to solve their problems.
