POLITICAL SOPHISTICATION AND THE 2015 GENERAL ELECTIONS IN DELTA STATE There are certain basic determinants that influence an individual acceptance of a political aspirant for elections. As broad as they might be, it can be narrowed down to just two: political socialization and public opinion. The process through which an individual becomes aware of politics, forms political values and belong to political groups/parties and/or political pressure groups is what is tagged political socialization. This is usually influenced by certain agents such as the family, school, media, peer group, community and general life experience. And, these usually serve to guide what ends an individual directs his/her energies politically. Public opinion refers to the aggregate of individual attitudes, beliefs or values shared by some group of persons in a given society. These could be as a result of ideologies or demographics such as education, income, religion and ethnicity. Individuals could also form their beliefs via self interest and possibly political knowledge/information available to them. There is a thin line between political socialization and public opinion. The public opinion electorates have of an aspirant usually dissects them into various social political groups. Many young people differ in political views but it is important for us not to get wrapped up in individual candidacy and personalities but instead focus on real issues. The better the public opinion about an aspirant, the larger the group is in terms of number. The better the public image of an aspirant, the more support he gets. This can be referred to as political sophistication. We need leaders with good public image, who seek common ground among their people instead of thee ones dividing us further along the line of ethnicity and religo-politico division for self aggrandizement. As young people, we must ensure that only leaders who embrace creativity based on ideological professionalism, thoughtfulness, civility and kindness to others irrespective of their political affiliation are voted into power. It is imperative to note here that our individual rights are not subject to a public vote but to our individual opinions. The majority has no right to vote away the rights of the minority. One foremost political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by the majority. A political system that wont protect minority rights is the one of magnanimous inequity, injustice. This might deteriorate into a state of anarchy. We live in a society where fault-finding is the order of the day; it seems to always have its way within our society. This has been the basis of so many political campaigns; the theme of most television programme and also social media, newspaper and magazines personnel has been to fault individuals irrespective of their sociopolitical class. This has led to unconsciously reacting to first impression about imperfection in some political leaders who do not have the qualities preached about them. These agents of division have confused us on what right persons to actually stamp our thumb for. But, if we are careful enough, we will know rights from lefts. It is essential that we ensure that all young people have every opportunity to participate fully and actively in election matters. As they say, evil prevails when good men sit down to discuss sweet nothing. Get involved in the political process. Get out… vote and ensure that our votes count by the protection of our votes. While you hold your own political views, for the sake of equity and public image, we must all ensure that Senator (Dr.) Ifeanyi Okowa emerges Governor of Delta state come February 28th 2015.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 13:37:29 +0000
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