Maravi

Stop jumping around like monkeys

Stop jumping around like monkeys
By Editorial
Sunday September 02, 2007 [04:00]

TRULY, the endless parliamentary and local government by-elections are costing the taxpayer a lot. Money that could be used to improve our health and education services, our road and rail network and other infrastructure is unnecessarily and unjustifiably being spent on by-elections. We are told that the cost for a parliamentary by-election cost the taxpayer between two and three billion kwacha.

Surely, there is a better and more sensible way of using this money. Those in politics must be sensible and responsible in the way they use money made available by the taxpayer. Yes, everyone in this country has the freedom of association; they have the right to belong to a political party of their choice or indeed to form their own as and when they deem fit or so desire. But freedom should be accompanied by responsibility; it is freedom to responsibility and not freedom to irresponsibility. It is certainly not being responsible for our politicians to jump from one party to another, causing unnecessary and unjustifiable by-elections that cost the taxpayer billions of kwacha.

It is easy for us today to harangue and condemn Charles Chimumbwa for creating an unnecessary and unjustifiable parliamentary by-election in Nchanga. But it will not be fair to single out Charles for victimisation because what he has done has been done by so many others before and will be done by many others after him if nothing changes.

There is need for us to try to understand why our multiparty political system has become a circus, a zoo where politicians are jumping from one party to the other with so much ease like monkeys jumping from one branch or tree to another. It is evident that our politics is not premised on any principles; our political parties have no clear outlooks or characteristics other than tribal, regional that truly define them. It is very easy for a few people to form a party today and to stop talking to each other tomorrow and split without much ado. What seems to enable our politicians to easily move from one political party to another is the fact that neither themselves nor their political parties are based on any principles, on any beliefs or convictions - they have no ideological outlook. Our political parties are simply a motley assortment of contradictory elements whose only common denominator is pursuit of power and the glory and financial benefits that go with it. This may also explain why the movement is predominantly from the opposition to the ruling party, unless at rare moments when the ruling party seems to be on its way out.
This behaviour, this practice is undermining multiparty or plural politics in our country. Some people are legitimately starting to feel that a diversity of political parties is serving no beneficial purpose other than being an artifice aimed at dividing the people. This may appear to be true in the conditions of our country today and it is starting to give credence to those who say this concept has demonstrated utter failure in Africa. The form of political organisation should promote unity, if possible. Some people are starting to lose hope in multiparty politics and are increasingly beginning to feel this concept can only work in Europe because the situations of the European and our countries are not comparable. They say the European countries are rich and developed; they have established certain political forms and achieved certain standards of living by exploiting and plundering the rest of the world. They amassed enormous wealth that they took from our poor countries, from the colonies and neo-colonised countries, and they have achieved a passable standard of living. They say because of this, they invented procedures for maintaining a sort of social peace based on re-distributing some of the wealth to alleviate the waste consequences of capitalistic exploitation, and to calm the masses of the poorest and dispossessed. They have managed to establish a system - which may not be called a single party system - of single-class government. They have established a ruling class that, using different methods - which include some differences of opinion within the capitalist system - has created a political situation in which nothing threatens its system. Its members are rich and live in peace. They live in conditions that are completely different from those in our poor countries.
There may be a difference of opinion, but it's a difference of opinion within the system, whose continued existence is ensured by the monopoly on all means of communication, all money, all wealth and all the power of the state. It is said that this is the only way a system of that kind can continue to exist. They say this is how multi-party politics is surviving and appearing to be doing well in those countries.
Here people get into public office because of ambition or pleasure. Our politicians have divided the people into petty political parties that bring no guidance to the nation. They have divided the ignorant and are misleading people into factions supporting unscrupulous and greedy politicians. Thus they have weakened the people; thus they have confused the people. And they are using the electoral processes so often prostituted to falsify the will and the interests of the people and so many times used to put into office the most inept and most shrewd, rather than the most competent and the most honest.
This is not democracy. We say this because democracy, for us, means that elected officials and the governments they form are closely linked to the people, arise from the people, have the support of the people and devote themselves entirely to working and struggling for the people and the people's interests. Democracy implies the defence of all the rights of citizens, including the right to national dignity and honour.
Our politicians should learn to stand for what is right and not always worry about what is politically feasible. Yes, in life, including in politics, rebels will always be there. True rebels, after all, are as rare as true lovers, and, in both cases, to mistake a fever for a passion can destroy one's life.

As we have already pointed out, our politicians have freedom of association, of joining political parties of their choice. But surely, does this mean that when they differ with each other in their political parties, the taxpayer should pay for their differences through by-elections? We shouldn't forget that freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent and debate. All real freedom springs from necessity and therefore our politics need people with credibility.

All our politicians should be called to maturity, tolerance and responsibility. They cannot be allowed to continue wasting or misusing public funds in endless and senseless by-elections. They will not be able to call others to virtues, which they themselves do not make effort to practise. We ask our politicians to be exemplary in their lives and work. Our politicians should never forget that as they exercise their freedoms, they are bound to responsible behaviour. Politics is an area of great importance to our survival and progress as a nation and should accordingly be a vocation, a way of building up society for the common good.

We should not allow our country's politics to be relegated to trivialities chosen precisely to salve the consciences of political opportunists and to conceal the plight of the masses of our people. Those in politics should have principles and should be prepared to suffer for those principles, beliefs or convictions. This country doesn't need politicians or politics without principles because they will take us nowhere; we will be running in circles with our politicians jumping, like monkeys, from one political party to another. But the difference between them and monkeys is that the monkeys do it at no cost while our politicians do it at a gigantic expense to the taxpayer. This must be stopped, this must change.

Labels: BY-ELECTIONS, EDITORIAL

posted by MrK @ 3:56 AM