A Consideration for Electoral Professionals in the Advancement of the Civic Civil Electoral Process in DRC.

I suggest in a manner strong to all engaged elections professionals that the social political public civic civil electoral leitmotiv for the calibration of any National/Regional/Local Election be grounded in considering with strict strident urgent attention the following statement uttered by Woodrow Wilson when he was campaigning to become President of the United States in 1912.

« Are you going to vote for a government which will regulate your master, or are you going to be your own masters and regulate the government and through the government these men who have tried to regulate you? »

The CENI including the DRC government administrative apparatus has a fundamental obligation to eradicate any element of civic electoral gangsterism shrouded within the veil of civic social economic coercion using every and all public administrative resources which includes the strengthening and funding of the educational system. Anything less must be considered as tacit compliance in accepting this pernicious cult of gangsterism who regard themselves as ‘law’.

When an election “is seriously compromised » using both qualitative and quantitative metrics does pose normative queries which are not necessarily easy to reconcile. The salient issue might well be: What can the International Community of Civic Civil Electoral Expert Advisors do in addressing this combustive technical [quantitative] and public policy [qualitative] concern in persuading a National Electoral Commission to step up and take full civic electoral responsibility in investigating [profound] allegations of electoral fraud.

The failure of young democracies [DRC, Ukraine, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Thailand, South Africa, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt] has enormous inter-continent civic electoral consequences notwithstanding that the ‘democracy idea’ grounded within a civic electoral matrix eventually and ultimately will be the end state of every nation on earth. This civic electoral ‘democracy idea’ remains a most powerful seductive concept [Fukuyama]. In the long run, democracy is on balance the best political system—-not because it allows citizens essential fundamental freedoms but because democracy as a normative concept enhances transparency and rule of law which in the long run will foster and encourage prescriptive ordinal citizen prosperity—the fundamental ontological essence of ‘civitas’—- essential in pluralistic dynamic flowering and flourishing of values connoting and promoting respect, peace, and good order. Civic Institution Elements grossly lacking in many fragile social democratic societies today.

Qualitative Electoral Good citizens who are alert, engaged and educated in the advancement of pluralistic common values should participate in a national conversation and reflect collectively upon the content and character of their shared national identity. In a prescriptive pluralistic society open to engaged polite debate, the motives of good citizens should arise freely; virtue cannot be the product of state civil coercion or servile civic indoctrination.

A liberal nationalist conception of civic virtue seems to imply some project of institutional design. The state’s institutions and practices need to be structured so as to cultivate and elevate civic virtue among its citizens. The most obvious realm is that of education. We cannot assume that citizens will fulfill their [civic electoral] responsibilities. Good national citizens are more likely to be the products of just institutions and of active pro-engaged public polity participation.

Civic Education involves reconciling an interest in the social reproduction of citizens with three important values.
1. the question of whether civic education might obstruct individual autonomy, by privileging civic conformity over critical self-direction
2. civic education must account for how parents’ interests in raising their children according to their beliefs and way of life can be accommodated, [if at all]
3. any transmission of civic virtue should be consistent with the toleration of difference and cultural respect: civic education, most particular the content of school civic curriculum, must not involve the oppressive assimilation of cultural minorities.

When organized along liberal pluralistic rubric, civic electoral education should/ought be guided by two ideas/concepts corresponding to ends and means. Respecting the ends, the liberal pluralistic nationalist should/ought to promote among future citizens a patriotic desire to contribute to a national tradition. This rules out one method of civic education favoured by many western type societies—a civic minimalism limited to basic political knowledge. Deliberative pluralistic democracy requires a more exacting standard of civic civil citizenship. Civic education should/ought involve an element/form of ‘national’ civic civil education, which equips future citizens with cultural civic civil literacy and which prepares them to participate in critical self-interpretation of the national civic civil culture.

The essential challenge for this civic civil educative program process is to ensure that any civic civil education is most sensitive to a normative value of cultural respect, which I believe has not historically been the case in many western civic civil education programs. Moral civic civil dialogue should/ought to be fostered and encouraged among all national participants. The young citizens over the course of their schooling and education should/ought have the opportunity to have multiple encounters with peers from divergent social backgrounds, and in the process forge/create/develop effective and affective ties of common fellowship with their future fellow citizens. Following this education rubric the potential exists in: will these future citizens be best equipped to participate in the kind of national-cultural dialogue conversation that defines a pluralistic national civil identity?

In theory, governance – once a constitution is in place – starts with elections. Let the people decide. But in DRC that great line from Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, The Poisonwood Bible, sums it up: “To the Congolese it seems odd that if one man gets fifty votes and the second forty-nine, the first one wins altogether and the second one plumb loses. That means almost half the people will be unhappy… and in a village that’s left halfway unhappy you haven’t heard the end of it. There is sure to be trouble somewhere down the line.”
This is especially the case in countries that are divided by ethnicity. Ethnic identity is deeper and stronger than national identity in many countries. In most, ethnic support in elections means the winner must reward that support by spending money in the region. Elections become a simple numbers game, a competition between ethnic-based parties. The winner takes all, leaving great swathes of an electoral region unrepresented and often ignored by governments as the current situation in DRC suggests in a manner real and quantitatively calibrated which is grounded upon the lack of a strong ordinal civic civil social culture which is most profound qualitative in form and function.

The Civic Electoral Process defies a simple quantitative measurement series of rubric measurement criteria. The Civic Civil Electoral Process is an amalgam exercising qualitative metrics within a quantitative norm of civic civil social cohesion essential if the civic civil electoral process is to be valued, validated in the normative element and most critical respected by the electorate even those who elected not to participate in the civic civil electoral process.

I am confident this fundamental essential question has been posed prior but nonetheless this is a question well worth revisiting and considering in now the current lens of ‘social media’.

An Election which is open and fair to all is contingent on media which is alert, engaged, proactive and not afraid to ask the tough questions on any matter or element pertaining to the operational conduct of an election. Ideally the media should be involved at all times throughout the ‘civic social electoral process’ which is a process procedure well grounded beyond the strict time frames allocated to an electoral process designated to select among various choices.

The Public wishes to be informed by the media which advances information in a non-biased objective value neutral manner not subservient to any political public governance entity.

Civic social electoral education is an ongoing process with no ‘best before time expiration’ and the media does have a fundamental fiduciary obligation to advise, suggest and inform ensuring that the citizen is made aware of the multi-varied options in choice as a strong state is contingent upon an engaged alert citizen.

The media must ‘afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted’ as a strong vibrant intelligent open free from compromise media is essential in the advancement of our civic civil social pluralist society which is regulated by the civic social electoral process.

Elections cannot operate in a normative manner unless the media exists to inform not in any manner subservient to the status quo.

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