General Election

Tim Steel writes for DOT  : 
As Bangl-adesh enters the, sadly, rather usual state of what will probably be another, controversial General Election, I reflect upon my experience of such trauma, both in my home country, the UK, and in others, where I have visited, or been resident, in the course of what, so often, becomes a deeply divisive social andpolitical experience. The price, we may think, that we all have to pay for the ‘managed’ democracies within which we all live.
The General Election that has, without doubt, seared most deeply into my psyche, was that in Japan during my early years of visiting that wonderful country.
‘We have’, one of my associates told me upon greeting me on arrival, ‘a Generlal Erection’.
I had become familiar with the difficulty many, perhaps most, Japanese people had when speaking English. So deeply embedded is the confusion of ‘L’ and ‘R’, that I was able to buy, in Tokyo, in the early days of CD, one by ‘Pink Froyd’!
But, from that point on, when working in UK General Election campaigns, I have found myself incapable of opening a speech with the phrase, ‘In this General Election’, without stumbling over the phrase, and, on one embarrassing occasion, saying, rather, ‘In this General Erection’.
The visual imagery conjured up by that need, I think, scarcely be imagined!
I have been equally struck, observing Japanese elections, by the habit of election candidates wearing white gloves…not, I was assured, to obviate the risk from handshakes, but rather, to demonstrate, graphically, their clean hands. Yes, that should have been revealing of the duplicity essential for all participants!
During my own 1979 election campaign in UK I found myself consulting my Conservative voting doctor about a apparent epidemic of itchy hands. ‘Scabies’, he instantly diagnosed, after a brief study, ‘that will teach you to glad hand your way around the lower classes as a Labour man’.
To anyone socially aware, however, despite the often heard, everywhere around the world, expression of dismay at the quality and lack of integrity in the candidates on the ballot papers, the fact remains that, as Churchill is said to have observed, apparently quoting an unknown predecessor ‘Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the rest’.
Yes, I was somewhat upset by the need to examine what the Returning Officer in Monmouth during the count at the General Election in which I stood, that included such as, ‘I wouldn’t vote for any of this scum were they the last living’. Nor did I react well to the defacement of my election posters, but, having already worked in so many campaigns, I suppose I was expecting such abuse.
Likewise, I am sure that Party people in the upcoming election in Bangladesh will react badly to much of the on air and online commentary. But I have been a little puzzled by those who acknowledge the achievements of recent years by the Government, but observe that it is ‘time for a change’. ‘Be careful what you wish for’, would be my response.
In UK, today, anyone politically aware would wonder, were an election called around the shambolic Brexit situation, just what hope or expectation they might reasonable have for an alternative Government. And the same might well be true of many, if not most, of the, so called, democracies; not least USA and Australia amongst them.
There can be no doubt that the stimulation of political activism may be, as I have found, amongst the most exciting and fascinating in life. But what comes afterwards?
I always loved the story told, after Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 election triumph, of the young son of a friend who, when at his Primary School, a teacher asked of the class of seven and eight year old if anyone knew who had won the previous day’s election, put up his hand, and responded, ‘Bloody Thatcher’.
So transient is political glory! And the effect of borrowed opinion!
The writer is a marketing and communications specialist.
E-mail: inceltica@yahoo.com