Emad Barsoum writes: Playing the cards
Federal elections have started already with early polls, the elections’ day in few days, but should I go or should I stay! That’s the question that I have been asked by some friends and colleagues. Most voters believe that if our nation is still under the contingency measures for fighting the pandemic, then the elections will not be in favour of any party or their candidates. It will not reflect the right choices.
Nonetheless, the elections process, by all means, does not necessarily reflect the choice of the most suitable candidate or even the fittest party.
If we take a deeper look at the election process, particularly these coming elections, and mainly in cosmopolitan cities, we will realize various non compatible stages and hence non satisfactory results. The first stage is the choice of a candidate among several nominees from the same party, usually such process is governed by ethnic or ideological influences, active members of political parties go to their own polls to choose one of several nominees, and the nominee who can collect the most applications for the party membership is the most likely to win the nomination! The question here is, did members of the party sign for membership based on their conviction of the party’s platform and plans, or for their belief in the nominee or because of on of the most cards played in politics, ethnicity and religious belief!
Another problem aroused on the surface of the nomination process, where there were not many nominees running for nominations, or many others were disqualified by the party, thus led us to accept those who have acclaimed their ridings, and again regardless of who is the fittest.
Such a procedure by the party leaves us wondering, why would the party favor one nominee over the other? And why in the first place we must choose between two or more nomination candidates if the party will enforce one of their choices! Is that what we should accept as the modern democracy?
Now the candidate is running for the elections, what do voters ought to choose? the party, its leader, or this candidate that is appointed, similar to the claimed divine choices during the medieval times?
Another major dilemma, since parties did not yet provide any tangible platform to deliver our country from the high inflation during the Covid times, the huge government debts, taxes ordeal, housing disaster which will leave all millennials either homeless or living with parents for good, and much more pressing issues that are not providing any brighter future.
Parties might show different plans and views for future socioeconomic reform, however, none of them is specific, clear, or tangible, but most are cards played for a short-term goal, which is, win these elections.
Our people need parties, their leaders, and candidates to think and consider the long-term future of our nation, the wellbeing of future generations, to think about us as one nation not a diversified group of ethnicities, races, or ideological beliefs.
Work for all of us, appeal to all of us, touch and feel our anguishes, without playing any cards on the table of elections, but one card, the True North, then we can decide to go.
