By Pearson Mbendera.
8 years ago, the world watched as the United States of America elected Barack Obama as their 44th president, the first of African America origin. His ascension into power was one of the most remarkable event in world history, with the Times magazine naming him the person of the year. He went on to win a couple of accolades including the Nobel Peace Prize. But despite him not being our president, or rather the president of the world, there is a lot of fascination with the US elections, and this year’s election will be no different.
With the United Stated poised to go to polls to choose who will be their next president for the next 4 years, the person who is dubbed the leader of the free world, he or she will wield a lot of power both within the US and in the international community. We look at 5 things we can learn from their elections.
1) No one is clean
The search of a perfect candidate seems to be the core of any election. Its about giving the job to the best candidate.
We hold our elected officials at a higher esteem than we do ordinary citizens, why wouldn’t we, these people will be in control of our resources, our future, its only right that they be upstanding individuals. But no one is clean, sometimes the election ends up being the choice of the lesser devil than the election of an angel.
2) Things are changing
There was a time when women weren’t even allowed to vote in the US, and now, a woman might just be the leader of the free world. Lets not forget that the outgoing president is from a minority group, things really are changing, and hopefully,this is a sign of better things yet to come.
The allegation that a woman parliamentarian was sexually harassed by the police in parliament last week surely doesn’t spell a good culture of respect for women here in Zimbabwe. If a woman in power like that is not immune to a case of sexual harassment, what hope do we have for women all over the country, the young and the old who are defenseless and cannot stand for themselves.
We need to do a lot for the women here in Zimbabwe. And it’s not just the women, bit every group that makes up part of Zimbabwe.
3) People love a good scandal.
Despite the heated debates about economic policies, scandals had people glued to their TVs and checking how much damage they would impose on the candidate.
Hilary Clinton’s campaign had been rocked by the FBI investigation into her misuse of her email accounts while she was the secretary of state. And Donald Trump has had many scandals including allegations of sexual harassment.
While we may not attack the personal live of our politicians with the same intensity as the people in the developed countries do, but we definitely have the same love for scandalous stories.
In some way, these scandals take people’s attention off the real issues, it is hard for people to concentrate on the economy, education, tax, unemployment when there is a sex scandal story going around. Who can blame them, the media coverage of all things illicit has made them even more attention grabbing than anything else reported on TV.
We have witnessed the leaking of some sex tapes here in Zimbabwe, including that of a political hopeful Lumumba. The fact that he went on to disrespect the president by using an F word to him clearly shows his lapse in judgement. But he did provide Zimbabweans with a story to share on social media, have them pass time for a while.
4)When things aren’t going your way, blame someone.
Russia has been blamed a lot throughout this election, with both camps citing something damning about the Russians.
We are no stranger to that. The ZANU PF blames the sanctions for almost everything, MDC blames ZANU PF and so forth. In the end, the people suffer. But who really cares, its not about the people, it wasn’t meant to be in the beginning anyway.
It sounds cynical, but only a few people in this world will take responsibility of the things they would have done wrong, and blaming someone else seems like the logical thing to do.
But there is a limit to the number of times you can play the blame game, because once you overuse it, people will see right through you, and it won’t be pleasant. its good knowing that you can, while blaming someone else, you correcting the mistakes, and come out a hero. And that’s politics. I think they teach that in political classes. Or maybe i’m just a cynic. Can’t tell which is which now.
5) Politics isn’t everything
Despite having a lot of news channels that broadcast on a daily basis, 24 hours a day, politics isn’t the only thing these news channels talk about, there are many other things.
Here we seem to have politicized everything, acting as if politics control every facet of our lives, but that’s not the case.
By continuing to look at politics and trying to draw some political connections from where they don’t exist and coming up with some twisted conspiracies, we miss out on a lot and waste time which would rather be used productively.
Maybe elections are a lot similar in a lot of ways. Be it in the US or in Zimbabwe, there are a lot of similarities and people crying of the same things.
Looking at what others are doing, surely we can take some of the good and leave out the bad and build on that, instead of continuing in our destructive path. Not that its all bad here, but surely there is plenty of room for improvement.
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