WHAT WILL MAKE POLITICIANS TO FULFIL THEIR ELECTION PROMISES The question is what is a political manifesto? A manifesto is a public written declaration of principles, policies, and objectives, especially one issued by a political movement or candidate. All over the world especially in all democratic societies political parties and candidates campaign for election into office based on manifesto they use to tell the electorate what they will do when the electorate vote them into office. So there is no wrong absolutely wrong with a political party or candidate promising to repair roads, build schools, hospitals, eradicate poverty when campaigning for an elective office. The most important thing is we the people must hold such a political party or candidate to its promise after election. It comes for vigilance for the electorate to ensure that such a party or candidate fulfils its promise to do the things the party or candidate said it will do after voting it into office. The electorate should not be bribed or compromised by such a party or candidate after election with tokenism such as the so called empowerment programmes our politicians are wont launch now and then to appease the electorate to the detriment of the provision of social amenities such as roads, hospitals, schools etc so that pressure will not be exerted on the party or candidate to fulfil its electioneering promises. Politicians who distribute largesse in the form of empowerment programme must have stolen. So we should shun politicians that distribute largesse rather than making sure that the government provides social amenities, expand the economy to create jobs and prosperity. So we must ensure that elections are free, fair, transparent and credible. We must not mortgage our conscience by receiving little gifts or money from politicians so that we do not demand accountability from them. If elections are not free and favour, our politicians will never be accountable and respect us. If elections are rigged our politicians would take us for granted and they will never fulfil promises made to us our elections time. If elections are free and fair we can then demand accountability from politicians because when they fail to render account, we will exercise the power vested on us as the electorate to vote them out during election. So nobody here should suggest because politicians have deceived all of us nobody should take the manifesto of APC serious. That will be cynicism. Cynicism will not help us. Human nature and society is dynamic not static. So if politicians in APC say they want to change and do the right thing, what is wrong with them? What we should do is to ensure that when we vote for them we demand accountability from them. We should use the manifesto a party or candidate use during campaign as the parameter to measure his performance in office. If the politicians fails to fulfil what he or she promised to do for us during campaign, we should know that such a Party or candidate is not trustworthy and be ready to vote in our during the next election. So nobody should off handily dismiss the roadmaps unveiled by the APC because we are use to deceit by politicians. It is the politicians that will effect a change not people from the mars. The alternative is a revolution. A revolution is not a tea party. So we should make do with what is available. We can change these politicians when all of us start demanding accountability from them and punishing them during election when they fail to fulfil the promises they made to us during electioneering campaign. All over the world politicians make promises. These promises are expressed in the form of manifestoes or declaration of what they will do when voted into office. We can change our politicians when we elect people or candidates based on track record, integrity and performance. We must discard voting based on ethnic, sectional or religious sentiments. We must not collect salt, palm wine, beer and money to vote those who have no character, competence and capacity. If we elect a competent person with character he will never disappoint by not leaving to his election promise to us. Let us not allow any politician to use thugs to snatch the ballot box to take it into the bush and dump already thumb printed ballot papers and take it to the polling booth for a corrupt INEC official to declare him the winner; such a politician will not fulfil his election promise to us. Such a politician will discard his manifesto on getting into office. Such a politician will become inaccessible after getting into office. Such a politician will become arrogant and take us for a ride. A politician who benefit from a rigged election will abandon his manifesto because he knows that he will surely rig the next election to get into office. So let every political party come out with road map on the polity just as the APC has done. This will help Nigerians make an informed choices come 2015. So that at the end of the day if such a Party fails to execute what it promised to do during electioneering campaign it can be held to account during the next election.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 10:09:58 +0000
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