Legislative elections

written Monday, 4 June 2007

 

 

Yesterday elections were held for the Senegalese parliament or legislature (I can't remember what it's called at the moment).   In my village, people went to vote at the school, and in the afternoon I went over to check things out.

 

It was very quiet.  There was one person from the gendarmerie (like the sheriff's office in the US) to officially keep things under control, but he just sat there drinking tea as people filed in to cast their votes. 

 

Inside the school they had hung up a curtain for people to go behind to do their voting.  Once the person had chosen who they wanted, they put the card in a brown envelope, came out from behind the curtain, and dropped it into a clear plastic box.   Then their finger was dipped in bright pink ink to prevent people from voting twice.

 

After checking out the voting for a while, I sat around with the village elder types (not an official position, they are just the guys who seem to be doing most of the running of the village, under the supervision of the chief).   One of them was complaining that people in the village had been voting for candidates who had never visited Laboya or given the village anything.  According to him, people shouldn't bother voting according to issues, because politicians always lie about those things anyway, but instead people should vote for whoever gave the village the most (like by visiting the village and handing out free rice).   I thought it was an interesting perspective on democracy.