Until the Electoral Commission (EC) audited the parties and cracked the whip, as it were, yesterday, the roll call of the groupings was a chaotic jumble in excess of a dozen.
We could not have been taken seriously by the outside world, given the quality of the so-called groupings and those purported to lead them.
We wondered whether our political activities are hinged on electoral laws and were close to concluding that the EC could not care a hoot about the chaos and restoring sanity in a befuddled picture.
When the issue of an electoral register was on the front burner, we observed the resuscitation of moribund political groupings: these were invited to come and proffer their positions on the subject.
We, alongside others, were quick to state that the EC had allowed these non-existent groups to resuscitate just so they would create a semblance of existence and relevance when in fact they are not.
We were not wrong even if at the eleventh hour, the EC has put on its thinking cap and done the right thing.
What happens to the impact of the non-existent parties on the outcome of the debate at the time the Commission opened the floodgates for them to jump into the fray?
Something was definitely wrong. Be it as it may, we are consoled by the dictum ‘better late than never.’
Sanity is critical in politics. When this is ignored and jokers and buffoons are allowed to parade themselves as flag bearers of five-member groups, we end up reducing politics to a prank: the accompanying image-dent infects the country as a whole, presenting us as an unserious people.
Why would a political party which seeks power through the ballot box be obsessed with attacking and maligning another opposition grouping rather than the ruling party?
Such a person could have only been hired to do so because it inures to the interest of the highest bidder, which is the ruling party.
But for electoral laws and for that matter certain binding conditions, anybody could float political parties. We cannot in the name of democracy allow persons who can hardly tell their dates of birth and other critical bio-data come close to wanting to be President.
A so-called leader of a political grouping, who cannot tell easily his home address, is nothing but a nonentity who has no place coming near the presidential race in a country worth its salt.
Some of the groupings have suffered the sledgehammer of the EC: their kiosk offices double as retail shops.
On market days, their logos appear on the façade of these structures to present a semblance of existence.
Haven’t we entertained these jokers and nonentities for far too long?
We must be serious as a country and consider party politics as a serious business because it is the vehicle through which our leaders are chosen.
Our successes and failures as a nation would depend upon the choices we make of such political leaders and what better ways to ensure this than through the existence of working electoral laws.
Perhaps Charlotte can be trusted after all. We are still watching anyway.
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