Wednesday 19 April 2006

Abort this preschool finger-painting politics immediately

It was not a joke afterall
With the sound of the television in the background, I just heard that there was going to be a Labour Party Political broadcast. Prick up your ears, instinctively.
Then like the surreal morphing into the ethereal with so much to chuckle about, I remembered a scene in Just for Laughs where on three occasions; three unassuming men were accosted by a team of uniformed men who jumped out of van lifted up the unsuspecting victims and carried then back from crossing the road, that was a laugh.
The comical voice started about true blue, red, yellow and then something about being conservative to the core to being the heir of Blair and then a liberal conservative. [1]
Surely! A democratic campaign seeking the votes of intelligent Britons cannot have boiled down to this triviality, which would make Telly Tubbies seem a complete bore.
I see your true colours
However, the full import of this message did not dawn on me till I heard the Conservative Party Political broadcast, which ended with Vote Blue, Go Green.
Suddenly, the campaign for the local elections is looking like a Hindu Festival of Colours as another colour, white this time seems to be so turned off mainstream politics they are about to vote for a party that is extreme about colour – the British National Party.
They are hardly representative of the Britain today, there is nothing national about their outlook, but I agree, they are a party.
Disinterested misrepresentation
This does not augur well for anyone, if our politics have become so juvenile that apathy and lethargy would offer yet another low turnout record.
We have definitely reached a point where democracy is failing us, when majorities are not so much about the majority of the populace that are eligible to vote but a majority of the minority that care to exercise their civil duties.
Representative democracy too seems only to matter at elections beyond which the elected seem to ignore the need for representative accountability till the next polling day.
Party politics rules even if it is not the party and policies you espouse.
Enough of the finger-painting
Politicians debating can be a sequel to the Comedy of Errors, but when it comes to leadership, governance and policies that really do matter, we deserve better than reds, hitting on blues with yellows looking on and whites running off as the lack of green brings our aching world to an end.
Enough of the preschool finger-painting exercises and let us move on to the grand work of art. [2]
References
[2] Hebrews 6:1 paraphrased and culled from the Message Bible

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