PLAYING THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE-
Election graft:
why are our prophets silent on this?
By Karl Lyimo (Business Times of Tanzania)
WE in Tanzania are already living in exciting times indeed as the country hurtles headlong towards the October 31 elections which will, should put, the Eleventh Republican Government in power. Things started to hot up when one Sheikh What’s-his-Name scared to death potential election rivals for the incumbent, President Jakaya Kikwete.
The Sheikh did this by categorically stating that anyone from the president’s ruling party CcM who so much as dared to stand against the incumbent would just as soon head up the narrow and straight road to meet his/her Maker.
Now, not many people feel ready to do that, beginning with Adam of the Garden of Eden notoriety who tried to hide behind a fig leaf so that his Maker could not see him… Or, perhaps more accurately, could not se his nakedness. ‘Who told you that you are naked?’ thundered the Good Lord, sending Adam shaking like an aspen leaf – and wetting his fig leaf from sheer, naked fear!
But, that is a tale fit to be told another day…
As I was saying before I interrupted myself, these are exciting times, indeed. Much of the excitement was generated by the processes adopted by the veteran ruling party CCM to identify prospective election candidates who would carry their political flag – and, if they win, rule the country from the national and Council Legislatures.
It was generally believed ere now that sleaze was to be expected in elections from the preferential/primary polling to the Grand Slam on Election Day. However, nobody seems to have realized how deep the malignant cancer of corruption had gouged the body politic. Nobody knew: not the ruling party and its Governments; not the nation’s prophets and other patriarchs!
Preferential processes were in the past entrusted to a few delegates who sat in judgment to decide who would make a good candidate in the eyes of the party. In effect, this made it easier and feasible for aspiring candidates to grease the palms of a dozen or so party delegates, thereby looking good to the panel…
And, what looked good to the panel was good for the party at large. So, the cancer of corruption was carried on from the aspiring candidates to the selecting panel, to the rest of the party – finally reaching the Legislatures and the Executive.
14 per cent of the poll respondents either didn’t know, or believed that voters who took bribes to elect bribe givers were doing their country by right. What do our home-grown crystal ball gazers say? Cheers!
To curb this, the Party Headquarters decided that any and all card-carrying party members would be on the panel so as to make it difficult and unfeasible to corrupt into making the ‘wrong’ decision. The reasoning was that no aspiring candidate could afford to bribe thousands of panel members and, this way, make it onto the Candidacy List.
In the event, Party Headquarters was wrong. I have lost count of how many aspirants and their cohorts were arrested by the nation’s flamboyant graft Bureau. But, no matter…
How I wish the prophets, crystal ball gazers, readers of the stars and other followers of the celestial god of astrology would come out and tell us mortal humans how and when the farce will end. What we need is the ability and capability of the fabled phoenix to immolate itself when it is past its prime in every sense of the term… And then rise from the ashes a new, clean, perfect creature.
As the American Generals in the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early ‘70s used to say with a straight face, they destroyed entire villages to save them from the Cong Commies! Remember the Mai Lai Massacre?
Well, I think we need to do the same thing here… destroy some of the corruption-stinking institutions – not to save them, but to save the other, relatively cleaner ones from going down with the rotten ones.
The other day I came across one of those opinion polls which I so much love to disbelieve. This one was on the poser ‘Are people who select/elect leaders because they are bribed to do so doing justice to the country?’ (‘Wanaochagua viongozi kwa kupewa rushwa: je, wanalitendea haki taifa lao?). [Nipashe-Jumapili: August 8, 2010].
Eighty-six per cent of the respondents told ITV respondents a resounding ‘NO,’ with seven per cent each saying ‘YES,’ and ‘I DON’T KNOW.’
Eighty per cent of the RadioOne respondents said NO, while the remaining 20 per cent saying YES. No ignoramuses here…
Would you believe that? I mean: 14 per cent of the ITV respondents either did not know, or held the view that voters who took bribes to elect bribe givers were doing their country by right. Whew! I’ll never understand such a stand if I live longer that the patriarch Methuselah. Can you? Cheers!
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