Political Campaigns

Oh ye social studies gods, smite me not for my transgressions! I meant to describe the municipal political campaign as it was happening! I really did! I just didn’t get around to it and now the vote is over and I’ll have to tell it from memory. So, a little background. There was a coup last year in which the military threw out the old president, Maouya, who’d been ruling for twenty years. Since then, the country has been governed by a military junta. Normally, you think of military juntas as being pretty bad dudes, but these guys in power promised they would only rule for two years and would institute elections to choose their replacements. And they actually did it! And none of them ran in the elections! There has been lots of talk on the BBC about how this military regime has set such a good example for its African counterparts by stepping down gracefully, instead of dragging the country into conflict. The campaign started the first week of Novermber and consisted pretty much of political parties throwing…well, parties… trying to impress as many people as possible. There were tents set up all over town with loud speakers alternately blaring political speeches, Koranic chanting, and arab pop music. One of these tents was right behind my house and I took to wearing ear plugs whenever in my house. It wasn’t the volume that was irritating, it was the same god-awful arab pop song over and over. Parties tried to outdo each other with gifts and give aways, and I think that was kind of the extent of the campaign. Of course, I have such a limited understanding of what actually goes on around me, it’s possible that there were other things happening. It seemed to me that most of it was based on money and reputation of the candidates.

Limnaya was very involved in it all. She was constantly going to meetings and rallys. She worked as an electoral comission agent and went out into the bush with flip charts to teach illiterate people how to vote. The flip charts came from the national electoral commission and were pretty cool. They talked abut not selling your identity card, not fighting, how to fill out the ballot. Each party had a symbol, so all people had to do was check next to the party they wanted. The vote was two days ago. Limnaya worked at a polling station with two other guys and she was so proud that theirs was the first station to turn in their results.

The results haven’t been announced yet. Limnaya has been fervently supporting the current mayor, who is also the director of my school. The GMC is housed in a room in the Mayor’s building. He’s been very very supportive of Jordy and I and is a HUGE part of the community not tarring and feathering us. At the moment, he’s ahead by 1 conseiller vote, which I understand to be something electoral college-ish. Now all the candidates for mayor and their conseillers will get together and revote. A candidate has to get 10 conseiller votes to become mayor. Our good mayor has 5 and the candidate just after him has 4. This guy with four is from the Islamist party. Yeah. Yikes. If the Islamist wins this re-vote, I am so screwed, it’s not even remotely funny. Limnaya’s nephew who likes to speak English said this morning, “If he wins, it will be much trouble for you.” Limnaya’s niece started singing the Islamist party campaign song and singsonged, “You and Limnaya can forget about your Center! He’ll never let you stay!” Limnaya retorted, “Whatever. You don’t know anything. We have nothing to worry about.”