We are so ‘young’ on the Morning-Before and have so much to learn
 Someone once said that love affairs are like holidays (or was it the
other way around?); anticipated with relish, experienced with discomfort
and remembered with nostalgia. It occurred to me that most things are
like that. There ‘moment before’ tingles. There is always a little
thrill in the whole business of anticipation.
Then we jump in or that which we were looking forward to jumps us and
the encounter is not always ‘as-expected’. Indeed it often involves a
lot of re-adjustment, shifting of goalposts and a matter of making the
best out of the way things turn up. Time passes over it and we sigh; we
tell ourselves ‘those were the days’ or ‘that was one great party’ or ‘I
felt so alive at that moment’.
Voters
I am sure all of us can name at least ten things that follow the
above pattern. Elections are not like that. Well, not always. If we all
looked back at the tyrants we’ve elected believing that they are the
saviours of the people it is quite possible that we might never vote
again. The point is that things change, like the bread of Egypt as
Octavio Paz once put it, ‘night passes over it and (one) cannot eat it
anymore’. The voter changes, as does the representative that is elected
and the circumstances in which he/she represents.
First time voters can be wide-eyed and excited and I won’t begrudge
them the moment of feeling important beyond the call of reason. I am
thinking more about people who are not voting for the first time
excluding of course the kepuwath kola/nil types. I was wondering if
voters ever look back and ask themselves what they expected at the point
of voting. I was wondering if people ask themselves how much of the
promises uttered during elections were made good on, the degree of
disappointment and (in the rare case of course) if expectations were
ever exceeded by party and candidate voted for.
Election time
 I am pretty sure that all of us have lots of reasons to be
disappointed. Do we learn though? Do we, in the very least, take with a
pinch of salt the grand stories that politicians toss at us at election
time? Do we do the necessary homework before going to the polling booth?
Do we check out credentials? Do we assess track record? Do we compare
promise with delivery?
Do we subtract points for bad behaviour and disappointment, for
example culpability in things done against the national interest? Do we
give black marks for thuggery, use of foul language, consumption
patterns that are not compatible with wealth at the point of election
and an MP’s or a Minister’s remuneration package? Do we take points off
on account of company kept? Alternatively, do we naively believe
whatever a candidate/party tells us?
Vision
Today (April 7, 2010) is the ‘morning-before’. This is not a
‘too-close-to-call’ election and therefore depending on party loyalty,
people can start celebrating or lamenting early. I would, for example,
stay up only to listen to the announcing of the first electoral result
and depending on voting patterns for that electorate over the past
two-three elections, would be able to say which way the wind is blowing
and indeed how strong it is blowing as well. Most people, similarly,
would be able to tell a lot by midnight tomorrow.
It is still the morning-before. Most people have decided whom to vote
for by now. However, we still have time to re-think, to ask ourselves if
we’ve chosen well or poorly. I’ve said this before, but I will say it
again: we are who we elect. If we get thugs and crooks, that’s who we
are. If we get people who have skills, who are professional in whatever
they do, who have vision and energy, that’s who we are.
They say it is never too late to learn. They say learning is a life
long exercise. They say there’s many a slip between lip and cup. They
say lots of things like that. My mother used to tell me to read through
my answer script and promised me that there would be at least one error
that I could correct. She was a teacher. She was right.
I think this ‘morning-before’ should be a time of reflection and a
long discussion with ourselves in terms of the following question: ‘Have
I chosen correctly?’ I got an email just now, from my friend Errol
Alphonso. He has forwarded me two quotes.
Decision-making
This is the first: ‘Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait’. I am
told it means ‘If youth only knew, if age only could’. We are all young
when it comes to decision-making and we are all pretty arrogant, aren’t
we? Let’s second-guess ourselves.
Sure, we all know. We are all convinced. But then again, perhaps this
quote from Michelangelo would inject some humility into all of us:
‘Ancora Imparo’. This he had scribbled in the margin of one of his
sketches in the last years of his life. It means ‘still I am learning’.
Yes, let’s think again this ‘morning-before’ and let us continue to
think all the way to the polling booth. I am going to meditate on the
following words: intellect, professionalism, vision, skill,
track-record, wealth, wastage, pollution, vandalism, being uncouth and
arrogant. I might become older and might learn something that makes me
change my mind.
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