Politics

Political season has arrived. For the past two months, every Sunday there has been a caravana in Baoba and the neighboring communities. A caravana occurs when all of the supporters for one political party ride on their motors or in their pick up trucks honking horns, yelling and waving flags. These caravanas last for a couple of hours, with the politicians providing free gas to anyone who participates and dresses in that party’s designated color (one party is purple; the other is white). Unfortunately, at least one person dies in almost every caravana due to too many drunken, excited people riding on motors and not paying attention to what’s going on around them.

Baoba is especially excited to get a new mayor because ours left to live in the US about two months ago. So everyone’s ready to elect a new one, one that hopefully will stay in town throughout his entire term. Houses have hosted rallies, and the two candidates have been busy giving out money, fixing motors, and doing whatever else they think is necessary to win votes (a.k.a. bribery). People can submit wish lists to their desired candidates, and the candidates will buy them pretty much whatever they want in order to win more votes.

This is an actual conversation that I overheard:
Person A: “My candidate hasn’t given me anything. I asked for him to help me build my house.”
Person B: “I’ll talk to the other candidate. He’ll buy you 15 bags of cement for your house if you promise to vote for him.”
Person A: “Deal. I’ll switch political parties. Bring me the cement within two days.”

And there is no secrecy to the voting process. Sure, it’s all supposed to be private. However everyone knows who belongs to which party, and therefore they are able to literally count the votes and project the results 100% correctly. On Election Day, the politicians even pay drivers to take citizens to the polls, but only if they belong to their particular party. And when the people leave the polls, they are asked who they voted for and then paid money accordingly.

May 16 is Election Day. Our Peace Corps Director has ordered everyone to stay in the sites until he gives the all clear because of expected riots and random acts of violence. And this is just for local elections. Imagine how the country will be in 2012 when it is time for the presidential election. For the last presidential election, one candidate dropped pounds of salami from a helicopter around various communities. The one good thing about Election Day is that it is one of three days (Election Day, Christmas Day and Easter) in the entire year when the entire country has electricity for twenty-four hours straight.