The campaign trail for both the national and local posts for the May 9, 2015 general and automated elections have reached the homestretch. Candidates who are trailing behind the latest surveys have to work double time in order to catch up with the frontrunners in the positions that they are aspiring for. On the other hand, candidates who are leading their rivals as per independent and self-serving surveys have to further concretize their hold on the lead until election day and after the canvassing of votes to ensure their sweet victory. The homestretch is the time when supporters of trailing candidates have to shift their support to the potential winners because of their personal and political interests. It is the time where the electorates can witness who among the candidates are able to sustain their momentum in the campaign trail and who are those resorting to obviously ‘dirty tactics’ just to be able to gain the necessary mileage and mislead people into believing in what they are talking about when their promises are actually illogical, impractical and beyond the jurisdiction of the bureaucracy.
Let us not go to the national level to set an example for such false promises being made by aspiring leaders. In our city alone, there are a number of politicians who continuously make unimaginable promises to the electorates just to be able to win their hearts and their votes on election day.
One of the false promises being made by embattled politicians is the award of pay parking areas to the youth for them to be able to raise allowances for them to be able to attend local, regional and national sports competitions and allowances for school. Another impractical promise is that the award of the maintenance of clean toilets to the organizations of senior citizens for them to be the ones to maintain public toilets. Further, recyclable wastes generated by residents will be replaced by the city government with apples and or oranges. Another candidate is promising that he will open national roads to vendors upon the coordination and approval of the public works department among other petty promises that could really win the hearts of non-thinking voters.
If we assess the obviously false promises of these applicants for city officials, they are aimed at winning the hearts of the people and that they tend to believe on them thereby ensured of their votes on election day. However, such promises are full of legal obstacles and contrary to prevailing guidelines being implemented within the bureaucracy. People must remember that there are rules had regulations that have been passed upon by the city council in the designation of pay parking areas, the award of public toilets to competent private companies that have the track record in maintaining clean comfort rooms. On the replacement of garbage to apples and oranges, again, there are established rules that should be followed in the disposal of generated wastes which cannot be changed overnight. Moreover, the conversion of national roads into vending areas will again bring back the chaos in the city’s streets where pedestrians will again be at the mercy of the ambulant vendors wanting to occupy most parts of the sidewalks for their own advantage.
We are deeply disappointed on the way these professionals conduct their campaign just to evidently advance their own interests. Instead of helping educate the voters on whom to vote, they are the ones spreading and creating confusions among our voters just to be able to win their hearts. AS supposed honorable individuals once they are elected into office, they should start being honorable even when they are not yet in public office because their bad behaviors show up no matter what they do to hide such bad manners. These kind of leaders have no place in the bureaucracy that is ruled by laws.
If these brand of politicians believe that they can fool everybody through their squid tactics, they made a big mistake because a greater number of the city’s voters are intelligent ones who simply do not believe on such false pretences just to win their votes. In fact, despite the aggressive black propaganda waged by some militant groups to advance the interest of their benefactor during previous elections, it failed to work in the city. In fact, those who had been accusing some quarters of alleged vote-buying are now the ones resorting to massive vote-buying, especially in the stronghold of militant groups.
We reiterate our people to our electorate to conduct a thorough research on the private and public lives of the candidates for the various elective positions in the city. Let us do our homework before we go to the polling places and cast our votes on Election Day. Let us not be carried away by false promises of our aspiring city officials because it will be the bureaucracy that will prevail and not their promises once elected into office. Let us not be carried away by the sugar-coated words of politicians. More importantly, let us not gamble our votes to amateur and inexperienced leaders but instead let us place our bets for the ones we know that will seriously serve us for a better city in the next three years.
