Scientific Elections: Opposition Throwing Away Huge Opportunity
By Patrick Odongo Lango
Many new
political parties that sprung up to ride on the democratisation waves that
swept the world in the late 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, invariably had a single
agenda: to end one party rule and dictatorship.
Those who
succeeded, like in Zambia, Kenya and Ghana, to mention but three, changed their
fortunes forever; but those who failed, like in Zimbabwe, Uganda and Tanzania,
have been struggling to stay alive. That is the risk that all one-issue agenda
parties face; lacking ideological coherence to define broad policy agenda; once
their single objective eludes them for long, their members get disillusioned,
they fragment and diminish.
In contrast,
parties with clear ideological moorings and broad policy agenda tend to be more
resilient and adapt...