elec­tions, elec­tions, elec­tions — they nev­er end, do they? those sources are about amer­i­ca, but since we’ve mod­elled our soci­ety after neoliberal pres­i­den­tial sys­tems (or, as our beloved right-winger anni wants it, a par­lia­men­tary sys­tem — ބަރުލަމާނީ ނިޒާމު — like the uk, cana­da, or geno­ci­dal-fas­cist israel!), the utter fatigue and sense­less­ness of these cycles are very real to us as well.

now, don’t get me wrong, elec­tions aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly the prob­lem. it’s a process that says ‘we should be able to choose who man­ages our resources and oust them, and no one should have tyran­ni­cal con­trol over a major­i­ty’. that’s the idea, at least.

except the prob­lem is, like the west we’ve mod­elled our­selves after, we have a polit­i­cal democ­ra­cy with­out eco­nom­ic democ­ra­cy. Here’s more on that by dr. jason hick­el.

what that means is our elec­tions only let us change names and faces, but the pub­lic has no con­trol over the man­age­ment of pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, or cit­i­zen-ini­ti­at­ed account­abil­i­ty mea­sures for our lead­ers. most eco­nom­ic deci­sions are uni­lat­er­al­ly made, and the major­i­ty of our wealth, as i’ve explored with data jour­nal­ism, is com­mand­ed by and unfair­ly dis­trib­uted to the elite 1%.

what we have is the per­fec­tion of con­trol via cap­i­tal­ist real­ism. that makes sense, since nasheed was helped by the british con­ser­v­a­tives, mau­moon proud­ly rat­i­fied our pres­i­den­tial con­sti­tu­tion, and our bey­ful­hu class makes up a major­i­ty of those in bureau­cra­cy.

if what we have is a cos­play democ­ra­cy, is there a point to par­tic­i­pat­ing in elec­tions?

no.

you see, the rules of the game are rigged to favour cap­i­tal and cap­i­tal­ists. unless we have a move­ment that aims to swift­ly reform the con­sti­tu­tion to make it more equi­table and com­bat mech­a­nisms of cor­rup­tion, try­ing to play this game on their field by the rules will always end up in defeat. always. always! the house always wins — even if you “win” the elec­tions!

in order to make elec­toral pol­i­tics work, we must purge it of cor­rup­tion, rearrange its struc­tures to make it more cit­i­zen-acces­si­ble, engi­neer it so that eco­nom­ic democ­ra­cy is part of the equa­tion, and reset this neolib­er­al mess.

such change, i regret to tell you, is of a rev­o­lu­tion­ary capac­i­ty.

Elec­tions or mar­ket­ing a prod­uct?

you see, most peo­ple already know that they’re help­less with­in the rules of this game. that’s why they engage with elec­tions (par­lia­men­tary, pres­i­den­tial, coun­cil, what­ev­er) to get the only real ben­e­fits they can every year or so (check this doc­u­men­t’s pages 9–11 out). vot­ing is a trans­ac­tion:

• to earn imme­di­ate finan­cial relief (usu­al­ly Mvr 5,000 per vote, but some­times more)
• to secure jobs, employ­ment, and per­son­al busi­ness favours
• to obtain mate­r­i­al relief (util­i­ties, fur­nish­ing, food, etc.)

notice that my lan­guage does­n’t blame the vot­ers. you should­n’t.

you should recog­nise that this is mere­ly a by-design result of our cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem: keep the peo­ple poor, strug­gling to pay bills, at war with each oth­er, and exhaust­ed, and then use that fatigue and pover­ty as bar­gain­ing chips to shuf­fle your­selves in and out of bureau­cra­cy. it’s a pret­ty clever sys­tem, huh? thanks, british right-wingers.

and because our elec­toral sys­tem and “democ­ra­cy” is a per­for­mance, our politi­cians become per­form­ers them­selves.

Cam­paigns are rarely about well-researched, struc­tured, pow­er-dis­rup­tive poli­cies (or even fos­ter­ing dia­logue) and more about sell­ing your can­di­date. you need to get the vot­ers to make that trans­ac­tion no mat­ter what, you don’t need them to actu­al­ly engage in pol­i­tics. you need a mar­ket­ing team and dis­trib­u­tors, not polit­i­cal­ly engaged par­tic­i­pants.

inher­ent­ly, there’s noth­ing wrong with this — pub­lic rela­tions, after all — but when the process itself is com­mod­i­fied, mar­ket­ing becomes the core of a cam­paign, not an aux­il­liary ele­ment.

even with the recent inde­pen­dents and minor-par­ty can­di­dates, have you noticed?

beyond the fluff and lofty grand­stand­ing, if you know what to look for and know the basics with polit­i­cal pro­ce­dure and eco­nom­ics, here’s what you’ll notice:

• “poli­cies” are often just promise band-aids that address symp­toms
• there’s no plan­ning, struc­ture, research, or under­stand­ing in the least
• most “man­i­festos” and “cam­paigns” are con­jured on a whim
• they either promise full-blown solu­tions or say ‘we’ll fig­ure it out’
• these plans and efforts are made hasti­ly in a cou­ple months before elec­tions

mdp does it, ppm did it, pnc does it, pnf does it, democ­rats did it, the inde­pen­dents do it. i can’t speak for their moti­va­tions, but we can all see the hol­low­ness of the out­put.

you ever remem­ber vot­ing for school cap­tains in grade school?

it sure feels like that, you know, the way there’s always some idiot who will come up to you and say “ey vote lahchey ingey” for their can­di­date. you don’t know them, some of them bul­ly you from time to time, you don’t know what the fuck they’re up to, and you sure as hell know none of it will make a dif­fer­ence — but your teacher tells you that you must vote, and the can­di­dates’ loy­al best friend bul­lies are being annoy­ing­ly whiny about it, so you vote for ran­dom stu­pid-ass dork (and watch the kid whose par­ents has con­nec­tions to the school board win any­way, lmao).

well, that’s how i did it in school, i nev­er real­ly got along with any­one and did­n’t care much for most peo­ple.

this is mere­ly a step up.

so of course, it’s quite nat­ur­al: if can­di­dates are a prod­uct that sat­is­fies an imme­di­ate demand, then of course they’re mar­ket­ed as com­mod­oties. once they’re elect­ed, that demand is sat­is­fied, and it’s time to pro­duce more sup­ply rather than do any­thing with actu­al polit­i­cal change.

so engag­ing with the sys­tem with­in their rules is in fact some­thing the elites would encour­age, even if you were com­pet­ing against them. you know why? because your par­tic­i­pa­tion there­in legit­imis­es all that they stand for and val­i­dates their sys­tems of exploita­tion (even if you’re try­ing to ‘change it from with­in’), so they glee­ful­ly let you do it.

you may say “but we have to do some­thing”, but I point you to the politi­cian’s syl­lo­gism, a log­i­cal fal­la­cy so appro­pri­ate­ly named:

i already con­tribute a great deal to polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion out­side of these sys­tems. there are many ways you can con­tribute to change — and the devel­op­ment of rev­o­lu­tion­ary con­scious­ness — besides wast­ing your ener­gy on cap­i­tal­ist elec­toral pop­u­lar­i­ty con­tests.

that’s a top­ic for anoth­er day, though.