Politicians Should Respect The Electorate

Monitor Editor | Monday April 29, 2019 11:32

Our political landscape seems far from reaching the desired destination, of restricting campaigns to issues that are geared towards improving the lives of the voters. Most politicians find it more amusing to assassinate each other’s characters. They stoop so low to such an extent of involving even family in cheap politicking. Sadly, while such kind of politicking might earn one cheerleaders, who just follow blindly, without the decency to admit when one of their own has done wrong.

That does not advance the course of dealing with issues that affect the lives of ordinary people. In line with the trivia that has engulfed our society lately, there have been squabbles across the political divide. One wonders, how such individual will deal with serious matters pertaining to leading country. Recent reports indicate that a leader of one of the major political parties, allegedly, uttered distasteful words about a minor at a political rally.

If it is indeed true that the said leader uttered such words, it will be a disgrace for someone of his stature to have attacked an innocent minor. Worse still, the minor is not even a politician. For argument’s sake, if indeed the words were indeed true, what then would the leader have achieved by making the malicious uttering such words? 

Further, once may possible ask whether that is useful information? And how will it help the nation move forward? In fact, that is just one of the many examples of the cheap and banal politicking that will not take our country anywhere in terms of addressing the needs of the people.

Of recent we have see have more activities on the political arena, be it party in-fighting or political parties pointing accusing fingers at one another. They claim that the other party is trying to kill their campaigns by playing dirty.

Case in point is the recent grounding of two airplanes hired by the president of the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), Duma Boko. Facts surrounding reasons for the grounding of the two aircraft (a jet and helicopter) are still not clear. Nonetheless, the incident has left many speculating, depending on which side of the fence they are.  UDC supporters believe that the government was trying to sabotage their campaign, while his opponents have simply dismissed the matter as a strategy to give the government a bad name.

We hold the view that voters deserve to know what exactly transpired. This is to avoid situation where one of the politicians gets an itch to use the scenario to deceive voters.

If indeed, the right procedures were not followed prior to bringing the jet and helicopter into the country, then it was quite in order that relevant authorities were doing simply doing their job. The laws of the country should not be applied selectively.