In election strategies, focus on the poverty and how to curb it

-constituency has its litany of woes, and researchers often say no two constituency elections are similar in several aspects. Even when people vote it is the candidate who convinces them that they pick, and often the political party is disregarded.

But there is also an aspect where the presidential candidate matters, as those who prefer continuity shall have no hesitation supporting both the ruling party presidential candidate and respective candidates for Parliament and district council offices. Those who wish for systematic change may throw their lot with an opposition candidate, and the stronger or seemingly acceptable to the general public is the presidential candidate, the higher the chances that other contestants from that party will be voted as well. It is logical.

For one thing, campaign platforms that are now in the course of being drawn up as the parties finish or proceed with the job of picking candidates will be affected by the shift in the country’s classification from a low to lower middle income category globally. A higher classification favors a strategic outlook of a successful policy thrust and thus underlines success generally, which is true but can have disarming effects when it comes to dealing with core poverty issues. Much has been done but losing focus is bad.

At the time that leaders of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) member states were meeting in Dar es Salaam nearly a year ago, a datum came up from global agencies’ statistics that by 2030, half of the world’s extremely poor will be African children. What this means is that most countries are on the way to achieving middle income status even in Africa, though by 2018 there were 33 countries of sub-Saharan Africa which fit into that category. It means that the datum isn’t being outpaced by status.

 The basic reality of poverty, on the basis of data collected by non-governmental organizations especially those focusing on women and children poverty, is that far too many women are taking care of families all by themselves. And where there are trappings of viable family life, income is disproportionately used for direct needs of bread winners and not for wider family interests. It means that men obviate from their roles after fatherhood especially when it is informal, and lack a sense of balance of own needs and family.

Such woes even prompted women lobbies to seek greater participation in policy making organs especially Parliament so as to help end such ills, but the contrary is also happening. While women’s voices are being heard and in some cases helped to bring about vast changes though credit is also due to the top leadership at that particular moment, representation per se is not a panacea. It becomes another ladder of rising up in society, and the whole idea of 50-50 is not 50 percent of ideas of combating poverty, but of large vehicles. That is why political parties need more ideas of combating women-children poverty, not the 50-50 parity as this brings up negative satisfaction of sharing out ‘eating positions’ while the poor become poorer still.