Unpopular but victorious!

THE TWISTER

BY BRIAN LIGOMEKA

Senegal is planning to hold a second round of presidential elections after the divided opposition failed to kick out incumbent leader Abdoulaye Wade. As a matter of fact it was Wade who was leading with 34.8 percent of the vote.  The main runner up was his former prime minister, Macky Sall, who came second with 26.5 percent. The other dozen opposition leaders split the rest of the votes.

Wade, who has been in power since 2000 and is seeking actually seeking a controversial third term and if the other opposition leaders will not rally behind Sall, the Senegalese leader will bounce back in power and will take advantage of the situation to groom his son, Karim, to succeed him.

Is what is happening in Senegal strange? Not all. Greed and egocentrism is what keep opposition leaders outside power for a long time. If all the opposition leaders had swallowed their pride and selfishness, Sall would have been sworn in as president by now. But because of political egoism and insatiability, Wade might end up ruling them for a third term, and his son will also rule them for three terms. Pure dynasty!

I recently wrote how the divided opposition will lose the 2014 elections? I had phones from my future presidents, all of them pledging that the opposition in Malawi will work together because they have a common enemy. Let me not commit treason by stating here that their common enemy is not a ruling party politician but the twin problem of poor governance and economic crisis.

 Deep-down my heart, I entirely agreed with their view that it is easy to change the regime in 2014 if the opposition leaders unite, but none of them told me that they are ready to support their colleague as a presidential candidate.

As I stated few weeks ago, it is extremely difficult to talk of tangible political alliances in Malawi because it is difficult for Joyce Banda, Atupele Muluzi, John Tembo and Friday Jumbe to accept that they should not be presidential candidates and instead they should support their alliance leader.

I still maintain that most of them are fooled by the undecided voters who wear their party colours at their rallies. Two party presidents challenged me that in their parties, they know their genuine supporters. I could not buy their arguments considering that the parliamentary candidates of both parties lost in Rumphi by elections. If they knew exactly their members they would not have dared to go into a by-election, they knew they would lose.

So the tale of women in my home village who shocked me when they said they have political colours of most parties in the country, which means every party counts them as their members; still hold water. In still believe such political chameleons fool politicians on their party membership and popularity.

In Senegal, there were about a dozen opposition presidential candidates and the incumbent trounced them all. Even for the most popular opposition leader, failed to beat the ruling party’s political machinations to ascend into power in the first round of the poll. The advantage of the incumbency, which is manifested in the control of most state resources and even setting up an apparatus for rigging the elections, worked against the opposition in Senegal. Luckily enough, their Constitution states that the winning president should amass at least 50 percent of the votes. If they did not have that provision, Wade would have been president.

What I am twisting here?

The ambition of those in the opposition is to get into power, unfortunately while most of them can sing about their goal day and night, none of them can tell you five smart strategies they have put in place to achieve their goal. All of them will tell you some cheap strategies such as “the rallies we are addressing are being patronised by many people. That is a sign that we are a popular opposition party geared to win 2014 elections.”

Despite having strategies full of mediocrity, the disorganised and divided opposition parties will cry foul when the elections are won or rigged by the ruling party. This is what is happening in Senegal now. All the opposition leaders hate Wade, but they have been failing to unite to defeat him.

As far as I am concerned winning an election is more than addressing rallies in villages, townships and even at Njamba, Masintha and Katoto Freedom Parks.

The point is Malawians might be tired with the current regime because of its numerous follies manifesting themselves through forex, fuel, drug and food shortages, but they will be let down by the weak and divided opposition in 2014.

With more than ten faces of presidential candidates on the ballot paper, the opposition will split their votes and make the ruling party candidate win the elections with ease.

Imagine there are 4 million eligible voters and the majority of them, 3 million voters want regime change and the minority of them (one million) are ruling party diehards. If there is an opposition alliance, the opposition will win as 3 million voters outnumber the ruling party’s one million voters.

But imagine that Tembo, Atupele, Jumbe, and Banda assume that they are popular opposition figures and can win on their own, what happens? They will share the 3 million opposition votes amongst themselves. On average each one of them will get 750,000 votes. Though the opposition voters in total are 3 million, but in that scenario Peter Mutharika will win because with one million votes, he has beaten them all and simple majority rule demands that he is our next president. This is how opposition parties lose elections in Africa. It is because of the self-centredness and political ravenousness which infuriate their supporters who crave for change.

While most opposition leaders hate alliances if they are not chosen as presidential candidates for their coalitions, their hatred for political cooperation is what sentences them to many years in opposition. Formation of strategic political alliances is one of the strategies of boosting chances of winning an election. Even if the ruling party wants to retain power political alliance is one of the strategies they can use to get some votes from the opposition.

The take home message is that being angry and frustrated with the current regime does not translate into regime change if opposition parties have no tangible strategies. Addressing rallies and shouting slogans for change or future prosperity are not the only strategies that can propel one into power.

Hate it or not, Wade is very unpopular but emerged victorious, courtesy of the divided opposition.