WITH THE start of the
campaign for the local elections, the noise and people traffic have trebled.
This has always been the case during election season; and ordinary people just
can never seem to bear the additional trouble.
We know that candidates need
to present themselves—actually it’s more about their names being shouted
accompanied by campaign jingles parodied from famous songs; but for them to
start so early in the morning and converge on one location, this is asking for
trouble.
Never mind that no one can
understand the jingles as they are all playing simultaneously; never mind that
candidates and their campaign people are banging on doors and gates; and never
mind that campaign leaflets and pamphlets are being tucked on doors, windows
and gates. The real issue is whether these acts should compel a voter to vote
for them.
No one can gauge a
candidate’s fitness for office through a three-minute jingle; even if they
would play this non-stop for hours. Nobody can judge a candidate’s fitness
through their campaign materials; we all know those are either manufactured or
embellished accomplishments. And no voter can evaluate a candidate’s
qualifications by a mere smile, handshake and useless greetings.
The elections are supposed to
be the process where the people voice their opinion by voting into office the
people they believe will be of great help to them. Unfortunately, in the flurry
of jingles, pamphlets and handshakes, the very reason they are running for
office has been shuffled out of the deck.
It is of no wonder that most
voters either rely on name recall—which would serve those who have advertising
budget and actual famous people—and whom they personally knew, either by being
a classmate in school or a former neighbor. And the result of this process ends
up in mostly clowns being elected into office.
Clowns who neither know nor
understand what they are supposed to do once in office. Clowns who do not have
any grasp of the crucial and urgent issues of the country or the place where
they were elected. And clowns who only ran for office either because it is a
family tradition or a way to gain power that would later pave the way for them
to pocket money from government projects.
We deserve the leaders we
elect. And as soon as we recognize and comprehend this, we neither have the
right nor wherewithal to complain about it once we realize our mistakes. The
elections are supposed to be the means to correct those mistakes. But as most
of us really do not take the elections seriously nor understand the repercussions
of our decision on who to vote for, then we are condemned to repeat this vicious
cycle every three years.
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