| Election monitoring: the good (very little of that), the bad and the ugly... | Send to a friend |
| Saturday, 04 September 2010 14:25 |
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I read somewhere that Tanzania is able, willing and ready to receive more than 7,200 observer from the four (actually more) corners of the world to monitor the multi-party elections 56 days away. Polling is tentatively slated for October 31, 2010 – bar developments of cataclysmic proportions in-between... Remember the nation's premier astrologer, Sheikh What's-His-Name, who (presumably after a lot of stargazing and crystal ball-gazing) pontificated that the elections won't be held as scheduled! I'm a practitioner of such sagacities as not badmouthing alligators before safely crossing the swamp. As such, I prefer to give the sheikh enough rope... Even if only in the hope he gets to use it from the highest branches of the nearest mango tree if and when October 31 comes, passes – and the vote-counting skulduggery starts in earnest! They call it election stealing elsewhere... In my 'Book of Things' – a copy of which William Jefferson Blythe-III (popular as Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the US) seems to have read – it's called 'Stealing the Country', not mere theft of an election or ballots! But, that's a tale fit to be told another day... The story here today's about the conduct of the so-called 'democratic elections.' (I am sorely tempted to call it the 'mis-conduct' of elections... But, no matter)! Ever since I started writing for pleasure in the early 1960s – and as a civil and civilised means of supplementing life's dietary and other needs in the mid-1990s – I've never found a more difficult subject-matter for QWERTY-aided perambulations than this one on election-monitoring! What animal, pray, is 'election monitoring?' The phraseology isn't only a contradiction in terms; it's also a syllogistic contradiction... By definition, election is the process of electing, or being elected, to office or 'official' position in society. To 'elect' in this sense is to choose a particular person via a vote in preference over another/others. The presumption – nay: assumption – is that one's vote'll always be respected... Will be counted and, therefore, count in arriving at the correct results/decision at the end of it all. But, when and where elections (nay: whole nations-state) are stolen as a matter of course via rigging, can that truly pass for true representative democracy? I ask you! Going back to that crap about election monitoring... 'What value election monitoring' is the 64,000-dollar question. In my 'Book of Things,' election monitors/observers are really not much more than a bunch of virtual gadabouts on a package tour of polling stations in other people's countries but their own! This is done at the (monetary) expense of their patrons, including such otherwise respected institutions as the UN System, the Southern Africa Development Community and the (British) Commonwealth... Have already forgotten that it still is 'British' in ways more than one? Sheesh! But, perhaps worse, the monitoring/observing is done at great cost to the electorate and populations in particular – who are the 'owners' of the processes – and democracy as a whole. Ever since I heard of election monitoring in Africa in particular, I am (subject to correction) yet to hear of election results being overturned on the strength of election monitoring findings, recommendations. After much grumbling, tsk-tsk-tsking, tut-tut-tutting and he-hawing, the monitors/observers fold up their tents following sundowners at a posh reception – and head for home the following morning. What a cushy vacation at everyone else's expense but their own! No, Sir (and Madam)... Election monitors/observers? At US$10,000 a head, that is $72m (Sh108bn) for 7,200 monitors on a a few days' jaunt in impoverished Tanzania. Give me 1,080 well-equipped/stocked dispensaries (each worth Sh100m) anytime... That's what the monitors/observes cost at a single fling.. Cheers! [ This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ]. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
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