A sure sign of when an elec­tion, lo­cal or gen­er­al, is near, is the ap­pear­ance in the me­dia of leaked in­for­ma­tion about cor­rup­tion, re­al or pro­pa­gan­dised. The sig­nals have been clear over the last cou­ple weeks with a num­ber of re­ports on al­leged cor­rup­tion ap­pear­ing in the me­dia.

Typ­i­cal of such re­ports is that they are stale dat­ed, mean­ing lit­tle or noth­ing can or has been done to bring the al­leged per­pe­tra­tors to court. Why were these 20-year-old re­ports of cor­rup­tion amount­ing to in ex­cess of bil­lions of dol­lars not turned over to the po­lice for se­ri­ous in­ves­tiga­tive fol­low-ons back when they were com­plet­ed?

Is it be­cause there is some­thing of a mu­tu­al­ly ac­cept­ed prac­tice of: “you scratch my back and I will scratch yours,” a quid pro quo be­tween the two ma­jor par­ties? “Don’t bring charges against me and I will do the same for you.”

Al­leged Bal­isi­er House-plus con­struc­tion bac­cha­nal, now the scan­dals sur­round­ing the air­port con­struc­tion are put in­to the me­dia to hud­dle and hob­ble the core of the elec­toral sup­port­ers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.

In the end, it’s a nev­er-end­ing tan­gle of which par­ty is more cor­rupt and which bits of pro­pa­gan­da are per­ceived to be more self-serv­ing than the oth­er. The sec­ondary and most im­por­tant dam­age of the retroac­tive fo­cus on al­leged cor­rup­tion is to have the elec­torate caught-up in this chas­ing of shad­ows while the re­al is­sues go un­no­ticed and un­at­tend­ed.

It’s not that we are say­ing that in­for­ma­tion on al­leged cor­rup­tion amount­ing to bil­lions stolen from the pub­lic should not be made avail­able to the pub­lic via the me­dia. There is al­so no ques­tion that the me­dia have every right and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to make the in­for­ma­tion pub­lic. The fact is that com­ing at this point and in this man­ner, the in­for­ma­tion is used as po­lit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da to win an elec­tion.

This is not a nov­el tac­tic, it has been con­sis­tent­ly used in elec­tion af­ter elec­tion with good ef­fect, why dis­con­tin­ue a strat­e­gy that has con­sis­tent­ly proven to be the most dy­nam­ic and re­sults-ori­ent­ed tool of an elec­tion cam­paign, the par­ties must con­clude.

As a bonus to the par­ties us­ing the strat­e­gy are the close link­ages be­tween cor­rup­tion pro­pa­gan­da and that oth­er elec­tion strap on the back of the elec­torate, trib­al­ism: which sup­port group is more cor­rupt than the oth­er.

The task be­fore peo­ple in their com­mu­ni­ties is to rise above par­ty af­fil­i­a­tion and re­move them­selves from be­ing buried un­der an avalanche of dis­tract­ing pro­pa­gan­da and to de­mand that par­ties con­front the re­al is­sues fac­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment com­mu­ni­ties.

As pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed, the first is­sue must be to have Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo pro­mul­gate the amend­ed Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Re­form Act. In­clud­ed in the Act are the is­sues re­lat­ing to fund­ing of the lo­cal bod­ies and the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions for high­er-lev­el func­tions—which means that can­di­dates must have the ca­pac­i­ty to man­age such re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, in­clu­sive of large bud­gets and com­pli­cat­ed tasks.

With­out such pen­e­tra­tion in­to the re­al is­sues fac­ing the decades-long promise to de­moc­ra­tise lo­cal gov­ern­ment, the forth­com­ing poll will be an­oth­er ex­er­cise in fu­til­i­ty cen­tred around par­ty pro­pa­gan­da.