Friday, November 11, 2005
Does it Matter? |
A lot of people are saying that this election campaign has so far been a lot less violent than a lot of people would have expected it to be. There have already been a few deaths this election season, but it’s been relatively peaceful. But do people believe that things are going to stay this way? I don’t think so. Everyone always says ‘so far’ when they talk about the lack of violence.
Let’s face it. We’re all expecting the number of violent incidents to rise drastically as the polling day draws closer. (Post election violence of course depends on who wins.) We’re used to our politicians being very very violent when it comes to elections. We take it for granted that they are going to stuff ballot boxes on polling day. And we take it for granted that supporters from either side are going to kill each other when they run into each other on the streets.
In areas where one political party is stronger than the other, the stronger party stuffs ballot boxes unchallenged. Whichever party has control of the center breaks election laws with utter impunity because they know the police will do nothing against them. They own the police dammit! How could the police ever do anything to hurt their campaign? And it’s also damn handy to have a few khaki clad baboons in hand to make some trouble for the opposition.
Oh hell, it gives us an excuse to stay at home on the day of the election. We take a walk to the polling station in the morning and cast our ballot and then go home and sit tight to wait for the results to come overnight. It’s a bloody good holiday. And since in all probability your boss is also doing the same you’re not going to get into trouble for skipping a day.
And then when person X wins over person Y because person X and his goons managed to a) stuff more ballot boxes than Y b) beat the shit out of Y’s supporters c) threatened more people than Y, we applaud our democracy.
‘ip ‘ip ‘ooray assholes, you have your new elected official, just as corrupt and undemocratic as the one you got rid of. Now suffer.
Let’s face it. We’re all expecting the number of violent incidents to rise drastically as the polling day draws closer. (Post election violence of course depends on who wins.) We’re used to our politicians being very very violent when it comes to elections. We take it for granted that they are going to stuff ballot boxes on polling day. And we take it for granted that supporters from either side are going to kill each other when they run into each other on the streets.
In areas where one political party is stronger than the other, the stronger party stuffs ballot boxes unchallenged. Whichever party has control of the center breaks election laws with utter impunity because they know the police will do nothing against them. They own the police dammit! How could the police ever do anything to hurt their campaign? And it’s also damn handy to have a few khaki clad baboons in hand to make some trouble for the opposition.
Oh hell, it gives us an excuse to stay at home on the day of the election. We take a walk to the polling station in the morning and cast our ballot and then go home and sit tight to wait for the results to come overnight. It’s a bloody good holiday. And since in all probability your boss is also doing the same you’re not going to get into trouble for skipping a day.
And then when person X wins over person Y because person X and his goons managed to a) stuff more ballot boxes than Y b) beat the shit out of Y’s supporters c) threatened more people than Y, we applaud our democracy.
‘ip ‘ip ‘ooray assholes, you have your new elected official, just as corrupt and undemocratic as the one you got rid of. Now suffer.
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# posted by
 : November 11, 2005 7:33 AM |
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# posted by
: November 11, 2005 11:46 PM |
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http://www.slelections.info/category.php?reportdate=2005-11-09 interesting reading. # thanks to whoever it was that put up this site on nitewa. |
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