EDITORIAL: Reconstructing The Base

 

FOR the progressives, the situation is dire.  After the loss to the PDP in the presidential election and the loss of all federal legislative seats, a further hammering took place during last week’s election to the state house of assembly, and the nightmare continues.

The State of Osun urgently needs to build an alternative perspective to the PDP. The state’s finest hours have been associated with interventions from the progressive tendency. The phrase “alternative perspective “ was coined by a former governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola and reflected his administration’s social democratic intervention which by putting the people first navigated a new political economy in which the state made real advances in access to health and education. Aregbesola decisively altered the territory of both the discourse and operations in a positive direction, bringing the benefits of democratic governance into the reach of the overwhelming majority of the population and not just a few.

The policy of inclusiveness ought to have been expanded upon and intensified. On the contrary, a self- serving crew did their very best to roll back the tide of progress. The result is the catastrophic election results. The results are not a fluke, it represents a clear rejection by the electorate of a political formation that has lost in the state of Osun its very reason for existence. 

A review must now be done. A football team engaged in a delegation dog fight sensibly looks at the ability if the head coach to marshal men and materials and to coordinate strategy. With the grim realities of relegation staring them in the face the decision as to whether to change course has to be made. The rational course is to change the manager (s). 

The APC must starve of a route to irrelevance by constituting a new manager. A party chairman who continues to lead the party into successive electoral routs has to go. The party must be rebuilt and repositioned from the base. It must return to its original foundation of putting the people first and must act as a change agent. 

A contemporary example is important to use here. When the agent Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola went back to his base in Alimosho in Lagos, he was a game changer in a fiercely contested election.  Aregbesola had an emotional connection, and empathy with the everyday concerns of the people and it made a difference, it changed the atmosphere as well as the political calculus. We must learn from this.

The absence of empathy with everyday concerns has alienated the people of the state from the APC. Trust has been broken and must be rebuilt. It will only be rebuilt through a strategic framework if putting everyday concerns of the people first. Everyday concerns must be addressed and the solutions to it okayed on top of the agenda. 

It will require developing new ideas and a leadership to implement it. The party must not lump in from electoral debacle to extinction. Osun state needs a progressive alternative to guide and to guard,