Cometh 2019: we have a real fight in our hands!

The voter should sit back, watch and enjoy themselves.
It is indeed their time. For once they are the ones in charge.
They are running the show.
Never before in our history has a voter’s attention  been courted and sought so intensely when elections are still so far away down the line.
We have just come out of a General Election. And already it feels like we are heading into another.
Every time after elections, politicians turn their backs against the voter, drift away into their dark alleys of power to enjoy their perks and all the trappings that come with being in power.
No so this time.
Since the General Elections in October, 2014, our politicians have not had time to themselves.
It is a sign of the time.
It is a true signal of what is at stake. Nobody has assured victory in 2019. And nobody is leaving it to chance.
Political parties are in a perpetual mode of election campaign.
It is a marvel to watch as the erstwhile arrogant and detached power elite fall over themselves to impress a voter who all of a sudden appreciates the potency of their vote.
January has barely come to an end and in this month alone political parties have held more events than one can count ÔÇô to receive, they all tell us, new recruits from the other side.
Naturally, some of these events smack of desperation. They are nothing more than hastily prepared small town-like jamborees, dressed with official party colours and then offered semblances of badly lacking authenticity.
And at the top tables are people who all want us to take seriously.
It is all part of a contest to impress the voter ÔÇô who having discovered their potency, is increasingly playing hard to get.
In the meantime, in their quest to showcase relevance, our political leaders, it would seem have no problem risking their reputations.
No one political party wants to be left behind, lest an impression is engraved in the public mind that they are a dying party.
In this ceaseless political whirlwind, honesty and facts have both flown out through the window.
The end result is that we now have our political leaders literally behaving like snake oil sales men ÔÇô conmen would be more appropriate word to use.
Just this week we saw the Chairman of the ruling party officiate at one such glittering event.
As always the state owned media was on tow to catalogue and magnify the event.
“BDP increases its membership” ÔÇô screamed a Daily News front page headline the following morning.
Little did the editors at this generally conservative and circumspect state newspaper know that the whole event was a bogus show.
A good number of people that had been paraded as new recruits we now know are longtime, fees paying members of the BDP.
The BDP chairman, it would seem has no problem risking his reputation, his integrity and dignity claiming that these are people just arriving in from opposition parties ÔÇô a result, as he said of hard work by party activists who are on a recruitment mode.
The Chairman’s attitude, it seems, is that he can risk his credibility for now as long as his party gains short term mileage. He seems to think he can always get back his reputation of honesty at a later stage.
That level of infidelity is a dangerous and potentially irreparable attitude of minimalism. 
Our politicians need to cool down a bit.
Political power can be an immensely priced commodity for one to wield, especially for those like the BDP who all their existence have not known anything else.
But such power should not be won or kept at all cost ÔÇô including recklessly soiling of one’s integrity as the BDP chairman did this week.
Whatever the case, it is reassuring that for once the voter is all of a sudden being taken much more seriously and not like a routine inconvenience that politicians have to tolerate rather than cultivate.
Abnormally aware of their growing power, and the lengths to which politicians are now prepared to go to win them, the voter is growing more vocal and more strenuous in their demands.
For once the voter is an important part of the game plan. And they should capitalize on this new found power to the fullest.
The General Election due in 2019 is the cutting point. It is the finishing line that has every politician’s eyes fixated on.
In the meantime the politicians have seen their power drastically reduced, in exact inverse proportions to the rise in power of the voter.
We now see our politicians helplessly pushed into a game in which they have little leverage,  even less ability to predict, and much less influence on the outcome.
For the anti-politician this is a gift from God.
The voter must now not just seek concessions from the politician, they also must insist on stripping the politician naked to see what stuff they really are made of before a final decision is made ahead of 2019.
The voter must insist on more substance and  less marketing in our politics.
And most importantly they must refuse being sold snake oil that politicians are always good at marketing.