Much Ado About Little Blue Thumbs

                

April 4, 2011

Technically, I am very apolitical, unfortunately, the recent happenings that Jegarized our existence as people living in the Zanga in the last seven or so days have created sufficient cause for me to voice my opinions and concerns. Where or what is the Zanga? It is a nation state located in the heart of Africa, sometimes regarded as the most populous nation in Africa. Zanga is located 20 nautical miles off the coast of Zamunda (of the Hollywood flick Coming to America fame).

I should start by commending Prof. on his forthrightness and ability to say it as it is! It takes balls of steel to stand before a nation and confidently reel out what at best could be described as woeful project planning and even more worrisome excuses, as the basis for the delayed elections which were initially scheduled for April 2, 2011, across our beloved motherland.

It is not news that in some polling stations, better described as centres under the green petesse (canopy or umbrella, pronounced kpetesse), voting had already reached near completion, hence the potential issue of the validity of our blue thumbs; as I am guessing that it is quite easy to get your thumbs blued without being accredited, then again, we are all honourable people in the Zanga and would do no such thing.

In terms of process, you get to the polling station, present your voters' registration slip, and you are accredited – simply put, you show your slip, it is matched against a counter copy on the eligible voters' list; if the information tallies, you are asked to present your thumb to be marked with ink. All accredited voters, thus, have at least one little blue thumb.

My frustration however does not lie in the potential blueness of my thumb or the fact that movement is restricted from the night before, (so much for freedoms as enshrined in the constitution), or even the fact that potential voters have no choice but to wait under the scorching sun to cast their vote or be disenfranchised…

My grouse is with the seeming comfort with which we seem to regress while the rest of the world make giant leaps with their employ of technology in the context of voting.

Let us compare notes:

In the sane world, there is no restriction of movement, there are no curfews, there are no grim-faced AK-47-wielding mobile policemen, voting is conducted in well constructed fully air-conditioned buildings or polling centers, you have the flexibility to vote wherever you choose to vote, you even get the option to vote through your embassy representative if you are living outside the country of your birth, there is minimal human interference which reduces the risk of errors, people vote with a sense of pride and with no fear of intimidation, while the political class is mature and more often than not, driven by a genuine desire to make a difference and serve the people.

In the Zanga and most of Africa, it is a slightly different situation; nine out of ten times, the political process itself is flawed and marred with allegations of fraud, incompetence and a forecast of wrong doing, only matched by the incompetence and immaturity of the political class. In the Zanga, the people are the servants who exist to satisfy every whim of the political class or as they have now come to be known the ruling class (so I reckon the rest of us are just lowly serfs or plebs). We have polling stations that are a little more than ramshackle dumps, or at best, an umbrella erected smack in the middle of an intersection for emphasis.

We have grim-faced gun-wielding drunk and near-illiterate mobile policemen whose only joy is to cause you pain or discomfort, or both, we have the political thugs and area boys who are of the same intellectual stock as most of the wolves clamoring for political office. Worse still, we are treated like sheep to be controlled and used as the ruling political class deems fit, or how else does one explain a 5.00pm curfew order issued to the unsuspecting populace at 5.30pm?

Where else, in the twenty-first century can you be told that you can only vote at the centre you registered? What then is the purpose of a voter registration exercise to populate a central database that cannot be accessed from across the country, considering the fact that all our data and biometrics were captured, short of capturing data on our sexual preferences and the list of meals that give us gas.

As we take bold steps towards taking control of our political destiny, we can only but be reminded of the tsunami of change that is sweeping across the Arabian peninsular into Northern Africa with the growing list of political casualties from Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen to Saudi Arabia; where the voice of the people was heard louder than the sound of gunfire, the oppression of soldiers’ whips and the threats and ultimatums of dictators.

As we all proceed to cast our votes over the next few weeks, to select the cabal that would rule the Zanga for the next few years, we can only hope and pray that someday, somehow, somewhere in the Zanga, someone or a group of people would step forward to speak the mind of the people and fight their battle for political and intellectual freedom and dignity.

So, until that day comes, all we can do for now is suck it in, go down to the polling shacks and present our thumbs, so that we all may proudly display our little blue thumbs in hope of a better brighter tomorrow.

-end-

image culled from google images.