How not to win general elections
Michael Dingake | Tuesday October 21, 2014 17:26
To be successful democracy must be based on a set of principles: equal rights of all the people within the geographic jurisdiction, guaranteed participation by all within a particular territory, non-discrimination between groups of different ethnicity, periodic elections conducted by an impartial body, the winner of the general elections to be based on the majority of people who participated in a free, fair and credible poll.
To pass the test of the application of the above stated principles the major assumption must be whether the participants in such a democratic setting enjoy the rights as outlined above. In the previous general elections one would be right to say the majority of Batswana were virtually forced to buy a pig in a poker The majority Batswana live in the rural areas where poverty, illiteracy, misinformation reign supreme.
The ruling party has been able to win 10 consecutive general elections, primarily because the rural poor, uneducated, uninformed were deprived of the right to know about alternative opposition parties in our multiparty democracy, due to the fact that the ruling BDP was advantaged by the incumbency factor, which it abuses to collect huge private business donations and monopolise the state media.
Readers may be interested to know, Mexico, the Latin American country was until the late 1990s under one-party rule for 70 years, due to the fact that like Botswana today, opposition parties were denied public party funding to enable them to compete on par by accessing the same electoral terrain the ruling party accessed! BDP has been a good student of the Mexican example how to win general elections: Keep the rivals farthest away from the electorate! The moment public party funding was introduced in the Mexican democracy, the situation changed dramatically and a change of government happened.
Botswana continues to resist public party funding; the ruling BDP doesn’t wish to countenance loss of power. Something however has happened to threaten the ruling party grip on power.
A private radio station, Gabz Fm, sponsored by the American Embassy in Botswana, supported by the British High Commission, Europcar and the trade union federation, BOFEPUSU, instituted election candidates’ debates, likely to affect the constantly unfavorable opposition results, made likely by this general elections candidates debate bonanza; the programme covered all the country’s current constituencies .
For the first time Batswana in remote rural areas heard directly from the opposition representatives about their election manifestos, and saw the representatives in living flesh. Hitherto , villagers out there were informed by the ruling BDP through the state-controlled media: Btv, Radio Botswana and the Daily News, that the animal called ‘opposition’ opposed anything and everything the ’good government’ proposed to implement for Batswana; where they didn’t oppose, these opposition-for-opposition-sake indoctrinated maniacs, promised the moon and the stars of the firmament ! For the first time, remote villagers I hope realise all the sinister allegations about opposition parties were defamatory and untrue. The government ought to know, that forcing opposition to play on an un-even field is not the way to win democratic elections. It’s the very antithesis of winning credible fair elections. Not only a fraudulent government like the Domkrag administration wins elections in a way it should not; there may be political parties in both camps, the ruling and the opposition, who try hard to win elections by fraudulent methods. A political party, ruling or opposition, which attempts to win general elections by manipulation of the voters, taking advantage of some voters’ knowledge or lack of it, of the electoral process, for example offering bribes or inducing relatives and friends to register in wrong constituency to benefit from their vote or adopting any other illegal method to win the elections, is not the way to win elections in a democratic dispensation. Poverty and ignorance prevalent among voters in developing economies is often exploited by cheats and fraudsters to influence the voter to vote a way detrimental to the voters true interest. Obviously that isn’t the commendable way to win elections.
Power, often reflected in political status or resources, flaunted by politicians is used to sway the voter. Take for instance President Ian Khama strategic use of helicopter to land in rural areas to address election campaign rallies. To the rural voter someone who travels by air to traverse rural distances has formidable leadership status to be elected as compared to some other leader who travels by donkey cart, to access the same electorate.
The day may come when the opposition and the ruling parties can compete on an equal footing in their mode of travel. But as long as no parity is discernable in the eyes of a section of voters between individual leaders, the playing ground is uneven. The situation isn’t the right one to win democratic elections.
Finally, there’s a rife tendency among some rivals to attempt to win elections by maligning opponents by exposing their private life, true or not.
There is however another tendency by political party activists to deliberately lie about the personal or party record of a rival. In the current election campaign this has been manifested by resort to unsubstantiated malicious lies by party activists against rivals. Cabral’s message is relevant: “Tell no lies. Claim no easy victories!” Lying is a despicable way to win elections. Amen!