We are having a political election

Let us be clear about it, the December general election 2015 is not a Party Politics Election, i.e. with one party competing against another. No, this is a Political Election. This is not an election campaign that ends on the night of December 9 with a farewell party in the streets and a holiday the next day, for our citizens to hand back our one month of power to the winning party’s bosses. {{more}}The results of this Political Election are ‘medium term’ results, a democratic renewal of our politics over the next three to five years.

The choice we have to make in this campaign is a choice between an old, depraved, beat down one another, victimizing, corrupting politics on one hand, and an enterprising, risk taking, goal setting, people lifting, innovating politics on the other. Voters are going to become more than voters; we are going to become citizen-entrepreneurs, making politics and power our citizen business.

WHY BECOME ACTIVE CITIZENS?

Look at yourself in the political mirror and tell me what you see. Let me tell you what I see in my mirror. Three things. (1) A happy smiling twisted up person whose conscience says something ugly and whose pocket says something nice. (2), A regular okay person who has a speaking device between his/ her tongue and his/her brain in public, playing positive messages, but a real speaking tongue releasing the truth at night when asleep, and (3), a hurting face, a victim’s soul, a hungering for justice bitterness, glad reaching for the ballot paper. The old politics is telling us: ‘Is so to live, now and forever more. Vote for your Party and enjoy the mirror picture for you and your neighbour. As long as we lock up ourselves in the old party politics, is so we will be. And that is why we must want to change our politics. The political party leaders won’t change things. Remember, they feel it is their time next, or their time again. When I see what I see staring back at me from the political mirror, I get kind of sick; that is not how I want to be, and that is not how I want you to be. I want out. So, I am going to make a change in this election campaign and become an active citizen-entrepreneur, taking risk, making change.

WHAT IS THE CHANGE FOR ME?

A voter does not really consider his/her goals or purpose in life very clearly. You know a voter may be a committed born-again Christian and be any of the three persons in the mirror. Yes, you or me, because we have not put our politics under the moral microscope of the kingdom that Jesus Christ calls us into. We feel that since the vote belongs to Caesar, do it Caesar’s way with greed and thoughtlessness, division and even hate! When we decide to become citizen-entrepreneurs, we have to examine and set our goals carefully. Remember there may be risks for you to face as a political entrepreneur, so measure your risks against your goals and your purpose in life. Balance them off and you will see that you can’t go for short- term, shallow goals. To be clear and concrete, two of the preliminary steps we must take, are to remove the Government of the Unity Labour Party from holding office, and to bring political renewal to our community when the New Democratic Party holds office. The goal we set is not a change of party in power, it is a renewing of Vincentian democracy and a change in our citizen character. You may consider, as I do, that making our democracy more inclusive to reach out to citizens outside the ULP, or opposed to the ULP was no mandate of the ULP. Can we see that in a new term, that this party will become an agent of justice and fair play, and open and critical discourse for all? I see the opposite prospects in a fourth term. More arrogance, more central control by one person. We must ease the squeeze down on our political space right now. At this election. That is a first step.

The next step which Round Table would like to open for conversation is renewing our political democracy with the New Democratic Party on the way to office. Let us put our insights together on this critical matter. This is quite new territory for us, but we have to navigate it to set out towards our goal.