Cagayan de Oro — As we get nearer to the next mid-term local elections, this line will again be the campaign mantra of Cagayan de Oro politicians gunning for City Hall supremacy —#LeaveNoOne Behind.
Promises made by candidates during election campaign should really be called proposals. Nothing else. Just plain proposals, and that’s it — no more, no less.
We, therefore, the electorate are the politicians easy targets of this empty rhetoric. Trouble is, we have not learned so far, and its a merry-go-round thing.
After all, political campaigning is essentially a marketing strategy, in which candidates present themselves as products, differentiate themselves from the other products, and make proposals on how they will perform if they get the job using this hashtag ‘LeaveNoOneBehind’.
Election campaign promises are a millieu of the election process, especially if they revolve around issues that makes the City of Cagayan de Oro great, or create progress, for all to enjoy, so to speak.
This is well said for a well-meaning local politician, yet how many are into this mindset?
Most often than not, the issues raised on the campaign trail involve
commitments on how to eradicate poverty in all its forms, end discrimination and exclusion and reduce poverty, inequalities and vulnerabilities.
And therefore to say ‘LeaveNoOneBehind’ simply means providing universal access to basic services and opportunities, irrespective of a person’s age, sex, ethnicity, wealth or place of residence.
It means upholding everyone’s right to access, enshrined in the human rights law and legislations across the length and breath of this City of Golden Friendship.
LeaveNoOneBehind entails reaching out the poorest of the poor, requires combating discrimination and rising inequalities within and amongst the downtrodden, and their root causes. Ideally yes, but this remains an ideal, in a City where election money ‘empowers’ the electorate, setting aside the sanctity of the ballot.
This is exactly a sham, a petty, worthless kind of thinking that had been enshrined permanently into the very essence of democratic space.
And yet this City is not alone in this respect— of the practice of using this Hastag LeaveNoOneBehind.
To say it bluntly, politicians had developed this #Leave NoOneBehind mentality as analytical marketing tool for their own political agenda, and it happens — and ends there — only during their campaign sorties.
