Rutashubanyuma
JF-Expert Member
- Sep 24, 2010
- 219,470
- 911,173
(By Rutashubanyuma Nestory a public policy analyst based in Arusha.)
Once more, this election season confirms certain habits stubbornly persist to survive even the harshest of economic times.
I have always perceived elaborate electoral posters an emboldened signature of profligacy.
Think of emaciated voters who worry when they are going to secure a next meal and right before their very darting eyes they see their municipality replete with presidential sumptuous posters! For a hungry voter the first needling question is whether CCM has put her priorities right between the joys of sating voters' eyes to a beaming, electronically retouched portrait of a presidential candidate and of submerging a subsurface water extraction windmill in a water thirsting rural community.
A message of frugality during economic hardships is germane while expensive posters convey a weird message of a wastrel government await the electorate. Alarmingly, ornate posters importuning voters to elect the ruling party may also portend CCM arcane policy of a spendthrift totally disconnected from the aspirations of a society she governs.
In the last five years introspection, CCM has lorded upon us the most bloated government, the largest deficit spending and the most foreign dependent development budget in the history of our craven independence. Whence, in that aspect one can easily justify top-notch presidential posters portraying a penchant for extravagance rather than frugality because fiscal indiscipline rewarding snooty escapades embodies CCM mentality. Look at electoral promises CCM has been lavishing but no one in CCM tent behooves the rectitude to expound where that packaged boon is hailing from!
We are witnesses to a collapse of global economy which has squeezed our GDP significantly and TRA revenues have dwarfed in a convulsed response. Global economy is unlikely to regain her best years at least in the next ten years and you have to wonder whom CCM's promissory bash targets to deceive. Are rural and urbanized poverty and ignorance now majoring CCM's new political currencies of survival? While CCM vows to eliminate poverty and illiteracy but you have to wonder whether her survival relishes upon their sustenance.
I cannot see an enlightened electorate succumbing to forlorn promises but a semi-illiterate populace can be subdued by anything real or facetious. But there is another subtlety emerging from the slogans captioning the CCM presidential posters: Vote for Kikwete and CCM because of a re-boosted verve! For me, this is shocking for a political party that had produced World class thinkers like Nyerere now fizzling to innovate relevant policy banners but are now heavily dependent on the "cult of personality" to bag away this election!
Here in Arusha, one yelling poster made a faint attempt to eulogize the establishment of EAC as a CCM touché!
The EAC was a byproduct of the British colonial rule and there is nothing now to showcase that the integration is niftier executed than it was in 1977 when the decisive impetus of repulsion got the better of us. In fact, the EAC looks more like a white elephant and remonstrating Tanzanians look more detached and out of place inside the an accountable EAC.
I thought CCM would have better story to boast than picking on a controversial narrative of the moribund EAC! For me, the biggest levity is a new fad of our doting politicians to distance themselves from the sage of aging.
Across the political divide, aging swashbucklers are refusing to accept that they are not growing younger anymore but they are facing the gloomy realities of their sunset years. As a reckoning price of being uncomfortable in their skins they garland themselves with dear "nips and tucks" to banish their furrowing faces and graying or balding domes.
Graying head is darkened and alopecia is also sandwiched with imported concoction and artificial hair. Dental formula is reshaped with veneer teeth while sagging wrinkles, second chins and handle bars are intricately nipped.
All squirming is forborne in the name of buoyant morphology easily attained in the gym and dieting. But in 1995, Nyerere bequeathed us a vital heritage…"leadership is not about facial indulgence."
If we remember that in October 31st, we will have dumped pretenders in destructive crisis with their own identity.
Once more, this election season confirms certain habits stubbornly persist to survive even the harshest of economic times.
I have always perceived elaborate electoral posters an emboldened signature of profligacy.
Think of emaciated voters who worry when they are going to secure a next meal and right before their very darting eyes they see their municipality replete with presidential sumptuous posters! For a hungry voter the first needling question is whether CCM has put her priorities right between the joys of sating voters' eyes to a beaming, electronically retouched portrait of a presidential candidate and of submerging a subsurface water extraction windmill in a water thirsting rural community.
A message of frugality during economic hardships is germane while expensive posters convey a weird message of a wastrel government await the electorate. Alarmingly, ornate posters importuning voters to elect the ruling party may also portend CCM arcane policy of a spendthrift totally disconnected from the aspirations of a society she governs.
In the last five years introspection, CCM has lorded upon us the most bloated government, the largest deficit spending and the most foreign dependent development budget in the history of our craven independence. Whence, in that aspect one can easily justify top-notch presidential posters portraying a penchant for extravagance rather than frugality because fiscal indiscipline rewarding snooty escapades embodies CCM mentality. Look at electoral promises CCM has been lavishing but no one in CCM tent behooves the rectitude to expound where that packaged boon is hailing from!
We are witnesses to a collapse of global economy which has squeezed our GDP significantly and TRA revenues have dwarfed in a convulsed response. Global economy is unlikely to regain her best years at least in the next ten years and you have to wonder whom CCM's promissory bash targets to deceive. Are rural and urbanized poverty and ignorance now majoring CCM's new political currencies of survival? While CCM vows to eliminate poverty and illiteracy but you have to wonder whether her survival relishes upon their sustenance.
I cannot see an enlightened electorate succumbing to forlorn promises but a semi-illiterate populace can be subdued by anything real or facetious. But there is another subtlety emerging from the slogans captioning the CCM presidential posters: Vote for Kikwete and CCM because of a re-boosted verve! For me, this is shocking for a political party that had produced World class thinkers like Nyerere now fizzling to innovate relevant policy banners but are now heavily dependent on the "cult of personality" to bag away this election!
Here in Arusha, one yelling poster made a faint attempt to eulogize the establishment of EAC as a CCM touché!
The EAC was a byproduct of the British colonial rule and there is nothing now to showcase that the integration is niftier executed than it was in 1977 when the decisive impetus of repulsion got the better of us. In fact, the EAC looks more like a white elephant and remonstrating Tanzanians look more detached and out of place inside the an accountable EAC.
I thought CCM would have better story to boast than picking on a controversial narrative of the moribund EAC! For me, the biggest levity is a new fad of our doting politicians to distance themselves from the sage of aging.
Across the political divide, aging swashbucklers are refusing to accept that they are not growing younger anymore but they are facing the gloomy realities of their sunset years. As a reckoning price of being uncomfortable in their skins they garland themselves with dear "nips and tucks" to banish their furrowing faces and graying or balding domes.
Graying head is darkened and alopecia is also sandwiched with imported concoction and artificial hair. Dental formula is reshaped with veneer teeth while sagging wrinkles, second chins and handle bars are intricately nipped.
All squirming is forborne in the name of buoyant morphology easily attained in the gym and dieting. But in 1995, Nyerere bequeathed us a vital heritage…"leadership is not about facial indulgence."
If we remember that in October 31st, we will have dumped pretenders in destructive crisis with their own identity.
