AfricaPress-Tanzania: ELECTION season is supposed to be an exciting season, since the election process is what, ultimately, national governance is anchored on.
The process involves two major groups of citizens-the voters and candidates seeking votes.
The major focus now is on the forthcoming parliamentary and presidential levels, which attract more attention because they produce men and women who play the crucial roles in the overall national governance machinery.
Parliament hosts a group of citizens who debate critical issues and enact laws around which national governance spins.
The executive, at the head of which is the President (personifying the Executive) is at the apex of the triumvirate whose two other components, besides Parliament, alternately known as the Legislature, is the Judiciary.
The importance of Parliament lies primarily on the fact that it is the law-making organ.
It is thus crucial that the men and women who are voted into the legislature should be highly credible.
Attributes to that end include being highly patriotic, of sound mind, cooperative and creative, by way of possessing the knack for fronting ideas for enhancing the country’s social, economic and political prospects.
The fact need not therefore be overstretched, that voters, for whom MPs are supposed to be servants, should bear those attributes in mind when they make their choices come Election Day.
The choices also matter a lot on who they vote for as their choice for the presidency – the topmost seat.
For the President, as overall leader, encompasses four major attributes-Head of State, Head of Government, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and Fountain of Honour.
The individual is the head of the Executive, as part of the triumvirate touched on earlier. Against that backdrop, President John Magufuli’s sentiments on the forthcoming General Election, espoused during his speech to dissolve the eleventh Parliament in Dodoma on Tuesday, are apt.
He stressed that campaigns for the exercise should be sober, whereby the focus should be on parties marketing their ideologies and manifestos, anchored on promoting national interests.
We fully concur, for, going by past experience, power hungry, uncouth candidates pursue mudslinging and violence as a mechanism for attaining their ambitions.
They shouldn’t be given a chance! At any rate, wananchi can easily distinguish the wheat from the chaff.
