It’s election time (again) on Sunday, only this time voters who will have the energy to get out of bed in the morning or excuse themselves from lunch will have to plough through an epic list of candidates hopeful of becoming town councilors or any one of the three dozen mayors.
Some of the candidates are there for the picnic (ie. various fruit in a basket case), and some others have been egged on by their party bosses who don’t care who is in charge of local issues as long as that person is faithful to the party line and is prepared to take orders from politicians. These are the ones who did not make it through in the parliamentary elections a mere seven months ago and have built up a surplus in advertising funds and billboard space that have polluted the streets, while the relentless printing of leaflets and mini-posters are blocking letter boxes in front of houses or in buildings.
Ironically, the majority of the candidates for the mayoral seats allege to be independent candidates, but confusingly have the endorsement of a certain political party or the chiefs of the ruling coalition.
To make things easy for the sane members of this society, there is a shorter list of reasonable and worthy people who are either seeking re-election or are running for office for the first time. These people should be judged on their merits, be it on their past performance and achievements (if they are incumbents) or practical proposals to ease the various problems or issues that face their local towns.
The only televised debate worth watching (comparatively) was the one between the two first-time candidates for Limassol, where the discussion to most extent focused on real issues such as autonomy, ports development, infrastructure projects, housing, animal rights and social services. Other debates are just not worth following, especially if there are more than two candidates vying for air time.
However, the state and other public organisations were very late to realise that female candidates were (as usual) far outnumbered by their male co-candidates. The campaigns being aired on radio and TV calling on voters to choose wisely and that “a female presence will improve things” in local administration seems to have backfired as even some of the few women candidates find it insulting to be grouped in a quota system and not by merit.
Considering that foreign residents are also taking part in these elections for the first time, the outcome will be interesting for pollsters and analysts to see whether people were at all interested in these elections or just fed up for this year.
