LGE: It doesn't end with your vote

PAOLO KERNAHAN

WHO'S GETTING revved up for the local government elections (LGE)?

I know, right? Me neither. I'd rather visit a sadist dentist and have him climb into my gaping maw with a rusty wrench than line up in the withering heat/pounding rain to go flush my devalued vote down the EBC commode.

After the media houses nourish themselves on a bountiful but fleeting political advertising feeding frenzy, what's next? After T-shirt printers, tent rental and sound-system companies eat their fill, how will our lives change?

Sidewalks will continue their slow, silent crumbling. Potholes in your communities will stretch and yawn ever wider as the Ministry of Works and local government bodies point fingers of responsibility at each other like some stupid Spider-Man meme.

Untended drains will continue to fester with moss overgrowth and garbage, high-rise sidewalks will keep getting higher and higher as local government bodies continually employ wholly unqualified contractors who couldn't build a sandwich.

Brand new multi-million-dollar community centres that made party insiders fat and slippery will remain locked, unavailable for use by the average peasant. Flooding will continue to paralyse the country and punish ordinary citizens with each passing shower.

Yet as we count down to the LGE, the political parties are winding you up just to drop you like a mixtape once you've given the only thing of value to them. At any rate, none of the aforementioned issues appear to be under consideration for this edition of the LGE. This round, more than ever, appears to be a pre-general election warm-up than any exercise of actual utility – one geared towards improving lives and conditions within our communities and homes.

Such is the way because the electorate holds fast to the belief (because doing so takes no effort) that their bit part starts and ends with casting a ballot. We are easy prey to the serpentine charms of these political hustlers – but we're also lazy and want to believe once we've voted, someone else can see about this unholy mess.

Recent troubles faced by the THA's Farley Augustine and his team are a potent reminder: politicians will keep disappointing us unless they're held accountable at every turn.

We hold these people up as messianic figures because that's who we need them to be – possessed of some extraordinary gifts, insights, or abilities.

The truth is far too unpalatable to consider: politicians are mere mortals with the same motivations and foibles as the rest of us fools. If anything, politicians are simply better than you are at conveying the belief that they're better than you are.

Somehow societies around the world convinced themselves that politics and governance are pathways to a life of service. In some ways, they are – service to oneself. It's true some people, compelled to be of use to others, enter politics with altruistic leanings. For the most part, however, we are governed by people with decidedly human ambitions, compulsions and weaknesses. When they're lionised to the point of divinity, their fall is that much more devastating to us.

Our system of governance and politics is built on horse trading, murky compromise, backroom deals, and venal influence. As such, it either magnetises personalities who are innately shady and prone to moral malleability, or it sidelines those who aren't.

There is only one force that's effective at holding politicians to their word – your voice beyond the vote. If a political party tells you that you've never had it better when you know that's garbage, it's your responsibility to make your objection known.

When politicians fall short of the standards their office demands (in principle), the only reliable check and balance is public enmity.

Electors have more avenues than ever to keep pressure applied to both the Government and the Opposition.

As we saw quite recently with the RIK saga, citizens know how to use social media to great effect when moved by matters of personal interest to them. There can be no matter more grave than the current state of the country, so the relative silence on those affairs is difficult to digest.

If you hired an electrician to rewire your home and you get electrocuted every time you wash the dishes, would you rehire that hack without a conversation about the shocking sink?

There's no perfect politician or political party. We must demand more of ourselves and be more demanding of the people who offer themselves for "public service."