Democracy starts at the ballot box
By Victor Angula /
Namibians will next week be asked to go out and vote for their leaders who will lead them at the regional councils and the local authorities.
Usually people don’t turn up in big numbers to cast their votes at regional and local elections, so that these elections tend to see low voter turnout.
Too often people have a bag full of reasons why they don’t want to come out and vote in these elections which come only after five years. And the reasons, a lot of them, are valid.
One of the reasons is that nothing changes even after people have voted – their lives remain the same – while those who are voted into political office at these levels go off and enjoy a good life.
One other reason is that there does not seem to be a choice at all, a good or better choice, between all of them who are contesting to be elected.
And yet another reason given is that “my vote doesn’t make any difference”.
But I believe that whatever the reasons, whether they are good reasons or not very good, a person must just go out to cast his or her vote because this small act is the beginning of democracy.
Democracy means that the government, whether at national level, at regional level or local level, belongs to the people. The government is the people, and the people are the government.
And one of the most important purposes of the government is to serve the people and provide their security (from criminals, from animals, from hunger, from homelessness), and provide for their comfort and convenience.
If people are suffering from unemployment, that is a big threat to their livelihoods, and to their comfort and convenience, so that the government is there to create manners in which people can escape this unemployment.
But if people are not going out to vote, it means that the people are refusing to go out to create the contract between them and their government.
You can only honestly say that the government is your government and it must account to you if you voted when there was an election.
Every five years there is a new contract, with new politicians or with the same politicians, to say that the politicians serving in government offices must serve for the benefit of the people who put them there.
And they will not know who put them in the office because it was a secret ballot, so that they will have to serve everyone.
But if you want to be served yet you don’t want to go out and vote when these public servants are being put in the offices then you would look like a crook.
If you demand to be served by politicians, but you never bothered to vote, it makes you look like you don’t have the right to demand but you are only demanding because you have a crooked mentality or crooked morality.
Those who will have the right to demand better services from the government are only those who go out to vote and create the contract of service. Unless you really wanted to vote but you could not vote because you were sick or you lost your voters card.
But if you deliberately refuse to vote, yet you want to demand and say it is your government, no way.
It’s by voting that you honestly can have this democratic right of having a government which is there to serve you.
– Victor Angula is the editor of Omutumwa News Online. He can be reached at victorangula@yahoo.com
