Home » Media Centre » Blogs » On High Stakes Political Party Nominations
When one reads the definition of political party nominations, political party nominations seem pretty innocuous: it’s the process that political parties use to select a candidate for an election to a particular office, in our case – President, Senator, Governor, Member of Parliament, or Women’s Representative etc. The political party nomination usually happens through a primary election, or direct nomination. Political party nominations are competitive, the people who are running want to win, but one assumes that political party should be pretty harmless they are after all not the real election.
However so this has not been the case, to say that the recent days political party primaries have been fraught would be an understatement. There have been been delays, violence, allegations of rigging, fake nomination certificates, fake education certificates, blame traded between the Independent Electoral Boundaries Commission (IEBC) and political parties over whose to blame for the delays, parties have extended their nomination dates, the IEBC has pushed back deadlines response, schools have been closed but by the far the saddest thing is that so far two people have been shot in political primary related incidences.
Why have the party nominations been so fraught? After all they are just party nominations, the real election is yet to happen. The thing is with our voting patterns political party primaries are not just party primaries. In the some places where particular political parties have a strong hold, the party primary is the election, and if an aspirant wins that a particular political party’s nomination they will probably win the election in that area.
For instance if party x (insert party name) has a strong hold in area y (insert area name) because the voters in area in y only vote for party x, then it follows that the nominee for party x will win whatever seat be it MP, governor, senator or women’s representative in the election because people will vote for the party, regardless of the nominee. And this is necessarily a formula for high stakes political party politics, because each party can only have one nominee for each position.
If an aspirant is running in an area where the populace only vote for a particular party what matters is not what the aspirant’s qualities are, or the values they espouse, but rather the party to which they belong. The first hurdle is getting into the ‘right’ party, but once an aspirant is in the right party, clinching the nomination becomes highly important because it signals a win in the election because the voters in the that particular area only vote for one particular party.
If only one person can be nominated for each seat it means that, the race or in our case fight for the parties nomination will be vicious in areas where the party has a strong hold, and it is because of this perhaps that the violence, or voter tampering in political primaries has been particularly bad in the some areas.
Voters can change this, however unless our voting patterns change we will probably continue to recycle the old guard who control the nomination process.
What are your thoughts on the recent political party nominations?
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