Critical perspective, elections, and country project

From the perspective of a country project that cares for all and the environment, how do the critical perspective, divisionism within the popular field, and the invocations of electoral fraud play to condition results?

When minority groups concentrate decisional power and wealth, they try to win electorally by calling on a diversity of maneuvers and tricks to manipulate population segments that, otherwise, would express themselves against the interest of dominators. Only through lies, colonizing minds, formatting subjectivities in their favor, they can impose the absurdity of making the victims their fervent defenders with a sterilized reflection.

Subduing mechanisms are various and diverse; including critical environmental, social, and economic aspects, some of which were identified in previous articles. In these lines, we will analyze how other strategically important aspects play: the role of the critical perspective, divisionism of the popular field induced either by concentrated power or due to its own lack of expertise, and the permanent invocation of electoral fraud when dominators see their supremacy being threatened.

Critical perspective

In general, a well-intentioned critical perspective helps in building an ever better country project. This critical perspective emerges from a view that perhaps is somewhat neglected or is not considered appropriately reinforcing a construction that is essentially collective.

Likewise, a critical perspective tends to respond to the diversity of interests that nest in the popular field, which must be considered and aligned in a way to strengthen and facilitate the collective construction.

On the other hand, the always-changing dynamic of social processes, scientific and technological development, advances in public and community administration, affect the circumstances that a critical perspective can appreciate and integrate to the constructive process.

If we were to refuse to budge on the diversity of contributions, we would risk alienating and frustrating segments of the popular field. Therefore, the need to count on leaderships that while sustaining the course, have the ability to apply times and sequences so that the contribution flow gets integrated in a constructive and harmonious way.

Nevertheless, there are limitations to this general characterization. There are critical perspectives of the popular field that do not enrich the construction of a country project; unfortunately, they cannot be included, but, to the extent possible, they have the right to know and understand what prevents their contribution.

There are other constraints from the own popular field that are difficult to calibrate. The aggressive and untimely ways of contributing can harm leaders and followers. They are committed people but with personalities that charge against others without considering the consequences. Although their intention is not to sow hard-to-repair grievances, they inflict injuries that can lead to animosity, resentment, mistrust among people that work towards the same country project.

A delicate aspect refers to critical perspectives during electoral phases. When we are in an electoral campaign, voices allied to the desired country project should become aware of the need of managing well the time to express critical perspectives. It is not about lying, deceiving, or concealing substantive issues that can enhance the country project; but rather to recognize the appropriate timing for offering those critiques. In democracy, the way of obtaining the required force to promote a country project is the electoral path, achieving good results. A candid mistake could undermine the own strength.

On the other hand, those who oppose such country project, in some cases, infiltrated within the own popular field, try to antagonize with serious arguments from their ideological arsenal or with falsehoods to preserve their privileges.

Induced divisionism or due to lack of expertise

Those who concentrate wealth and decisional power are, by definition, a minority. It is obvious that if concentration did not prevail, wealth and decisions would be distributed among all the members of society. Thus, it should not surprise us that the privileged minority retorts to diverse mechanisms for subduing and manipulating to mobilize wills so that they ignore their own interests and adopt those of their dominators. One of the most effective mechanisms in political and, in particular, electoral terms is trying to divide the popular field. History shows the myriad of swindles that dominators have successfully used to induce divisionism.

That is possible for a variety of reasons. In principle, because reality is not apprehensible by the average citizen who approaches it through mediators that in the most part are the media and information agencies. If this intermediation is coopted by concentrated power, as it usually happens, information and interpretation are born biased. In this context of misinformation and induced confusion, doubtful sources appear which are dedicated to sow insidious falsehoods trying to confront and disunite groups from the popular field. To achieve that, they use fake news or enlarge half-truths trying to enervate the relations within middle and popular sectors.

Furthermore, dominators tend to blackmail people that are trapped in unholy behaviors to belittle certain segments of the popular field. This is what is known as “carpetazo,” Spanish for having a dossier with compromising information that is threaten to make public.

While dominators induce divisionism, building a country for all requires the union of middle and popular sectors. This unity allows for building broad political coalitions that can put up an electoral fight and support the administration of governments of popular base. How can we achieve that? In different ways, in accordance with the singularities of each country and situation, among others: with a permanent work of popular clarification and support of social organizations, by skillfully aligning interests from sectors that can converge, counteracting with political activism and circulation of reliable information the manipulative bombardment of the concentrating power. Moreover, other ways are democratizing the media and promoting a diversity of voices and perspectives instead of repeated echoes, assuring the independence of judges and prosecutors, prioritizing political mobilization, counteracting judicial and media defamation and unfounded accusations.

False invocations of electoral fraud

It has become customary that as democratic processes expand, one of the instruments used by concentrated power to reproduce itself is to delegitimize the electoral process. They try to compromise the population’s confidence on the eventual results. In this way, if allies of concentrated power lose an election, accusations are raised regarding invented frauds trying to question the legitimacy of elected authorities. On the contrary, if they win the elections, nothing is doubted and the rigged falsehoods are ignored.

The invocation of fraud starts several months before the electoral act. Parties and the media, aligned with dominators that see their privileges threaten, cast doubts on the transparency of polling, suspicions on the integrity and impartiality of electoral authorities, the way in which the election is made, informatics procedures that could be used to manipulate results. Furthermore, they oppose the quick count of votes that can limit the maneuvers to transgress electoral will, question aptitude and independence of chairpersons of polling stations and even of some of the political parties’ supervisors.  

These campaigns generate onerous consequences. One is to convince public opinion that popular base parties can only win elections with fraud, while concentrated power is an honest and transparent field. Certainly, in solid democratic systems, those who invoke eventual frauds are usually (what a coincidence!) those that fear to lose their cunning privileges.

Another tremendous aspect of these invocations is that they are not made in isolated cases; they are repeated simultaneously in all the countries where minority groups are afraid of losing their power and hegemony. It seems a strategy from a manual of operations conceived internationally.

The invocation of electoral frauds questions the sovereignty of the vote, the sovereign will of entire societies. It aims at mining the legitimacy of democracies by opening spaces for antidemocratic movements to grow, which based on schemes and tricks, impose authoritarian governments and anti-popular policies. The alleged electoral illegitimacy becomes a key to preserve domination and privileges.

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