It is the deal-making season. The environment is ripe for business enterprise. Political aspirants are littered all over the country hawking their wares.
The compassionate politician will be doing his rounds gathering grassroots credentials. The people on the ground will be dangling voters’ cards to prompt political philanthropy.
Every five years, this manner of resource distribution occurs. Politicians will be out and about picking on people randomly and stuffing cash in their hands. That means at every funeral, wedding, sports gathering or during Sunday worship, there will be a political aspirant interrupting the proceeding to ‘announce their candidature’.
Fuss
They will walk in late, creating a lot of fuss, fidget about until someone hands them a microphone. It will probably be someone you have never heard of, but that won’t stop them from telling everyone present why they deserve to ‘capture the seat’ of whatever county.
There is a leadership bug that has gone viral. Where ten or more are gathered don’t be surprised when one arises to tell the rest “why they have decided to run”. They all know that they won’t be taken seriously until they show proof of generosity.
To have money is a sort of euphemism for the nice guy during the election season — the kind of guy who quickly draws his wallet when money matters are raised. That’s how we like our politicians, short on principle, long on philanthropy.
A man who drives a small car has no business meddling in politics. What use will you be to the people of his community when they come to their leader for help? Can you imagine a head of state who lives with his wife on a small farm and grows flowers as a side hustle? Who drives himself to work in a VW Beetle, which turns out to be his most prized possession? Who would entrust a man like that with power in Kenya?
Well, Uruguayans are different. They prefer their presidents broke. It was on Facebook that I discovered Jose Mujica on a friend’s wall. The 77-year-old Uruguayan head of state was nicknamed ‘the world’s poorest president’ by western media, partly because of bizarre habits such as donating 90 per cent of his salary to charity.
Nuisance
The pragmatic ex-guerilla is a sworn vegetarian who continues to work in a hospital once a week as a medical specialist. This is certainly unusual behaviour for a president — something of an anti-political figure that South America is famed for. Mujica is what I imagine Che Guevara would have evolved into.
There was a time broke politicians made up for their lack of hard cash with principle and character. They were usually bearded intellectuals who lived in the backbenches as a general nuisance to status quo.
Earning an honest living counted for something. In fact if you tended to be rich and pompous, one would be dismissed as a career politician.
Those days are long gone. We have since developed a real phobia for cash strapped politicians and there is a national conspiracy to keep them away from the treasury.
Without a proven corruption record, no one will entrust you with managing the economy of this country.
Hail father figures
Single parenthood is no longer a big deal in contemporary society. Mothers have been bringing up children for so long single handedly that their competence is no longer questioned.
In fact, children raised by single mothers are likely to become overachievers. Barrack Obama and Peter Kenneth are a clear case of the kind of self-belief a single parent can instill in her child.
The operative word here is parent and not single. There are many who use single parenthood as a badge of honour even when there is nothing to show other than physical resemblance to the child.
Raising a child single-handedly takes a great deal of responsibility, especially in a third world reality. The government is not exactly interested in getting the real daddy to commit to the responsibility of child support.
So necessity has brought along a new man who hangs around single mothers. He is usually well mannered, mature, responsible and shows good rapport with the child.
He is not the father nor the mother’s special friend. He is simply a new invention of our ever-dynamic relationship scene.
He is the father figure, that voluntary male mentor who provides psychological support to your child in the absence of the real daddy.
End of the world? Nah!
With all the noise around the signing of election pacts, it has slipped many that the end of the world is around the corner.
According to the Mayan calendar conspiracy theorists, the world should be ending in about ten days, a few days before Christmas — on December 21 precisely.
Hollywood also made a pretty good effort scaring everyone into considering the invasion of the planet by a more superior race — that long predicted arrival of intelligent life forms descending from the skies in ships shaped like saucers to mock our advanced technology.
Another favourite is the zombie apocalypse that has become a staple of sci-fi cinema.
Other conspiracy theorists claim there is a planet on a collision course with the earth that will blast humanity out of sight like the dinosaurs before us.
The day is around the corner and there must be a group of believers in some underground basement waiting for the signal from the mother ship to be beamed up and away to Planet X as the chosen ones.
The world has been wrongly predicted to end so many times.
In year 2000, the list of returnees from the outer realms included Jesus Christ. Supporting verses were presented and with divine evidence , December 31, 1999 seemed like a logical date to end of the world.
Nothing happened, save for a few disappointed evangelists cross checking their calendars with some secret Bible code.
Fortunately Nasa, the US space gazing agency, has come out strongly to dismiss the theory as utter nonsense.
The whole notion of the world ending in a big bang before Christmas is the kind of ploy a sly boyfriend would use to talk his way out of making Christmas commitments.
www.doitadigital.com