I SHALL not say that I am an apathetic voter but surely uninspired I am. And I have just been wondering how many of my fellow voters out there may be as uninspired as I am.
Luckily not to the point of not casting my vote during the presidential and National Assembly elections next Friday.
With only a week left to polling day, there has been nothing inspiring about the elections thus far, let alone about the ongoing campaigns.
The only inspiration that seems to be is the thought that one has one’s vote, and one’s democratic duty and right to cast one’s vote. Other than that there is little inspiration and motivation for some, if not all of us to go out and cast that vote.
Because simply there seems little difference between those clamouring for the votes of the voters. In fact, what has been seeming clear are the similarities in the empty promises of the political aspirants, some so utopian ever to be realised should those promising them ever assume the reign of governance, and my emphasis governance as opposed to reins of power.
A day that for some shall never dawn be in my lifetime, my child’s and neither my grandchildren and great grandchildren and that of yours.
As much democratic as one can be or would like to be, simply one cannot solely vote for democracy.
Only if such a democracy can have, and does have some attendant meanings, least of them material ones. This is as opposed to the mere hollowness of casting one’s vote as a democratic patriotic duty.
Truly speaking, the choices one is presented with, and seem to be presented with, to say the least is the flipside of the same coin at best, if not worse.
Because in terms of change, there is little to choose from the various choices on offer, which mostly seem to be copycats of one another, that is the absence of the utopianism and hollow promises that have been made.One cannot but wonder whether those who have been advocating some of these changes even understand them?
One cannot but be wondering whether the limited choices, if one can really call them choices at all, that seem to have been offered and dangled like cheap carrots, are really what the voters deserve?
Or, rather conversely, it is a matter of the candidates deserving the voters they seem to be getting with all their seemingly or perceived naivety telling by the promises that have been thrown into their faces? Which is which?
My guess is a good as yours but there can be no denying that either the candidates are being short-changed by the voters or vice versa.
One cannot but think and reflect deeply about one of the election educators recalling and relating lately on one of the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation’s (NBC) language services’ current affairs programme, a situation where they first had to provide a group of people deep in the rural Opuwo Constituency in the Kunene Region with some food rations to enable them more receptive and absorptive to voter education.
Surely voters could not care much either about voter education or voting on empty stomachs.
Axiomatically can one really also expect someone to cast her/his vote on an empty stomach unless there is a genuine hope that not long after the casting of such a vote, something material, even if only a slice of bread, would land in her impoverished and decimated hands, frail from hunger and neglect in between the polls, and from dissipated promises from one election to the other?
Yes, if those advocating some of the radical changes that are being advocated have any likelihood of transforming such promises into reality, one would have said there are choices available to the voters.
But this is far from the case. Yes, if peace, stability and tranquillity that we have been enjoying over the years since independence start somehow to manifest and transform into material wellbeing for the people, and the legacy that is to continue can equally become somehow tangible for the masses if not the majority of the Namibian people, then can one really speak of real choice (s).
But as for now there seems little choice other than the democratic choice of casting one’s vote, which at the end of the day in this era of economic hardships, seems like chasing a wild goose of electoral promises.
Is it for the sake of immediate material provision or for the sake of keeping the wheels of democracy oiled? Casting one’s vote to exercise one’s democratic right towards what end? Perpetuity of empty promises? Or intangible legacy?
Take your pick, but if these are the choices voters are being offered or seem to be promised this time around, it is as much there are no choices. It seems business as usual from one election after the other with poverty continuing unabated.
It seems the new dictum of freedom and independence is that the people shall be free and independent aesthetically, rhetorically and theoretically and psychologically but not physiologically, practically and materially as they do not eat.
It is a choice to be free and independent but evasive in terms of real progress, prosperity and well being.
A telling pointer and rude awakening to this sad reality of limited choices and empty promises is none other than the outcome of the recent by-elections in the Windhoek West Constituency where the candidate has been voted into office by a minority of the total registered voters in the constituency. Simply, this councillor shall, to say the least, be a councillor by democratic default!
Kae MaÞunÿu-Tjiparuro