Maravi

Our politics and political parties

Our politics and political parties
By Editor
Sunday July 13, 2008 [04:00]

THE organisation and operations of our political parties should be critically looked at by the National Constitutional Conference. The National Constitutional Conference must examine the conditions, systems, ideologies and political life of our political parties and our country in general - shedding light on them from the standpoint of good governance and as a sure line of orientation for all those who must assume social responsibilities in one form or another.

The state of our political parties at the moment should be a great source of worry. As Dr Francis Chigunta has correctly observed, our political parties are "empty shells which tend to operate temporarily, have high degrees of personalisation with poor understanding of politics as a service".

But this wouldn't worry us much if political parties were like other social clubs. However, political parties form governments and therefore the quality of their organisation is important to the country's governance and development.

And we are not in any way suggesting that our political parties should all be the same - organised in the same way with one outlook. Our political parties can be as varied as the nation in which they operate. The election campaigns that they conduct are usually time-consuming and sometimes silly. But the function they perform is deadly serious: to provide a peaceful and fair method by which our people can select their leaders and have a meaningful role in determining their own destiny.

And whatever system we come up with, it must promote unity in the nation, and not further divide our people into petty political parties that offer no guidance to the nation, that simply divide the ignorant and mislead people into factions supporting unscrupulous and greedy politicians.

The most important thing is to in a meaningful way increase the participation of our people in the governance of their country. If this can only be achieved by the government funding political parties, then let’s let that be done. It may appear to be a waste of money but if that's what it takes to manage the affairs of our country in a better way, in a more effective, efficient and orderly manner, then it will be a worthwhile expenditure.
Good governance does not come cheap. To govern a country well can be a costly undertaking - but a justifiable cost. But if this can be achieved without government funding, then let that be a bonus.

Well managed political parties will quantitatively and qualitatively increase and improve our people's participation in the affairs of their country. It is very difficult for many good and decent people to join highly personalised political parties, some of them with strong regional biases. It is much easier for one to join broad-based political parties that don't seem to be owned by an individual or a small group of individuals.

The other thing that may deserve critical examination is a form of representation. We should not regard our hybrid of the presidential and Westminster parliamentary system as cast in stone. It may be good for us to seriously consider bringing in one form or another of proportional representation. The system we currently have that is totally based on sweepstake winner excludes a lot of people from meaningful political participation. Under our current system, it's possible to have a political party that loses by one vote in every constituency having no seat in parliament. Is this really desirable? Is it fair to have such a party not being represented in parliament at all?

It’s very clear that the current political order doesn’t maximise political participation. It can actually sometimes exclude the majority from meaningful political participation. To us, the best political system is that in which more people participate. We are not asking for a city-state type of democracy as experienced in the Athens of those days. This is not possible with a population of eleven million scattered over a territory of over 750,000 square kilometres.

Everyone should feel they have a stake in the governance of their country. After all, democracy is said to be a system of government in which government arises from the participation of the people and devotes itself totally to their service, to their interests – it is a system of government in which all the people participate. Whatever type of political system we call it, what we should be looking for is a system that includes more people. Here we are not interested in names or concepts, our main preoccupation should be to find a political order that is more inclusive.
We should come up with a political system that encourages more and more of our people to participate in the governance of their country.

Politics is an important undertaking that is increasingly being despised today, that is being seen as a dirty game, yet it impacts so heavily on our people’s lives. We need a political order that will bring back respect and dignity to politics, to this very noble undertaking.

We therefore urge the National Constitutional Conference to deeply meditate over this issue and come up with a system that will help increase and improve the quality and quantity of political participation and representation in our country. This will not be an easy undertaking. And there is no need to copy other people’s systems. Let us come up with our own – one which is in tune with our people’s character, political culture and history. In short, let us come up with a political system that best serves our interests.

Labels: PARTIES, POLITICS, SUCCESSION

posted by MrK @ 6:27 AM