Think Outside the Ballot By Aduwa Otieno

The following conversation happens in a dingy, smoke-filled, noisy keg joint somewhere east of Moi Avenue:

“I’m proud of the three million that hasn’t registered as voters.”

“Ah, you know most of these people failed to register not out of political persuasions of any sort.”

“Oh yeah? I think their decision involves some element of disregard for the electoral system. That very act of not finding time to visit IEBC clerks, politically motivated or otherwise, is a signifier that not everyone grants legitimacy to what’s being doled out as democracy.”

“Alienating yourself from the democratic process is, for all intents and purposes, shirking your civic responsibility. Not voting is voting bad governance. It’s nothing but letting that corrupt leader take power.”

“Ah. It follows, then, that not swimming is a hobby. Your argument implies not voting as anti-democracy. Democracy in its strict Athenian sense was defined as ‘rule by the people’, but its current form, if correctly defined, would be ‘rule by elective representatives’. We have the latter, where civic responsibility is reduced to just casting a vote. Electoralism is now synonymous democracy.”

“Okay. But what are the alternatives? The way I see it, there are no conceivable ones. Your utopian quest is stuck up in the realm of fantasy. That just leaves us with electoralism. And yes, over the years it has revealed its shortcomings. Worth noting, though, is the systemic reforms that have made it better in some respects. IEBC has undergone structural changes that just can’t go unnoticed. Voting, for example, has been digitized, thereby significantly cutting down malpractices. You can now vote for your preferred candidate without the worry that the election is susceptible to rigging. Even better, with an honest electoral system, reforms have been carried further to the government.”

“Huh. Government. It has a mind of its own. Follows its own logic. It hardly matters who you put in there. And yes, there are alternatives, but they have no place within the current structures. For example, horizontalism. Leaderless, autonomous, communal organizations. Current systems are hierarchical, bureaucratic, and, generally, have a top-down mode of organization. For something like horizontalism – evidently a radical idea – to gain acceptance among the people, an overhaul would be necessary. The state and its bedfellow capitalism would have to be abolished. The state – ”

“A least fill me in on the perceived oppression by the state.”
“I wasn’t finished. Ever really asked yourself why we really need the government? Common response, obviously, is that chaos would be the order of the day without one. You don’t need a lengthy, academic rebuttal to this response. Just look at the hunter-gatherer communities. Travel back on the historical timeline up to when governance of current times wasn’t conceived. Organizations were small scale; something akin to affinity groups. Power structures were non-existent. No bureaucracy. No incentives to deny some access to life’s necessities. Certainly, no chaos. At least not the kind that proponents of the state imagine."

“Look around, bro, there’s no sociology undergrad here. Those are things best discussed within the confines of a classroom.”

“Fair enough. But let’s put the government to test. If you watch the news then you know that the health sector has been paralyzed for weeks on end. Death, as a result, has been on the rise. But the government doesn’t have a sensitive side. After all, those that make up the government and their families don’t use public healthcare. A terrible mistake is making the assumption that these people give a shit about the sensibilities of a life they don’t actually live. Anyway, given the government’s nature of running things, doctors’ protest were met with repression. Some were jailed, never mind the public outcry. How was this executed? The state used its extensions – the police and the judiciary. The police, having a monopoly on violence, disrupted the protests. You’ve seen videos of police men brutally beating protestors which would then be unashamedly ruled out as ‘acted’. But even the state operates within certain limits. They know when to stop. So when its image got tarnished they sought other maneuvers. Law was at their disposal. The constitution, inasmuch as we’d like to think it represents the good, has provisions that are essentially tools of repression. When doctors couldn’t call off the strike all the courts did was quote something from the law books that sent some of the doctors to prison. That’s just one instance.”

“True. But I fail to see how that amounts to systemic failure. Place the blame where it rightly belongs – the people that make up the government.”
“Are you already drunk? I mentioned how the systems in place largely fuel the problem. The police beat people that protests. The judiciary jails people whose only sin is fighting for the welfare of the masses.”

“What are your proposals then?”

“Think outside the ballot. You don’t vote out systemic oppression. Poverty doesn’t magically disappear by simply voting for person X or Y. Same way you don’t end racism by joining the Ku Klux Klan and bringing about reforms from the inside. In place of the state, how about autonomous, communal organizing? An alternative to capitalism? How about syndicalism? Simple reforms are just not enough.”

“Sounds like wishful thinking to me.”

“Oh yeah? By the way, how did the ‘middle class’ passivity catch up with you? Rich-girlfriend-influence?”

“None of your business.”

“Sure. Apologies. My lack of belief in electoralism still holds. Your argument just couldn’t convince someone of my political leanings otherwise.”

“Yeah yeah. Whatever.”

“Okay. Bottles up! Power to the people stick it to the -? Never mind.  Finish up. We have to catch a jav home. Kinda getting late.”