I welcome you to my blog and another wonderful edition of the hive learner's featured post. If political apathy were an organisation, I would have been one of those leading the organisation as well as marketing the organisation to other people in order to get them on the same page as me. Political apathy is an unwillingness to participate in politics or the unwillingness to be part of politics. I bet that I am not the only one who has very little or no urge at all to participate in politics, especially in a country where our votes don't even count, a country where elections are rigged right before our eyes and there is nothing we can do about that, a country where the end of every election is already predetermined even before the election starts.
Involving in politics especially on this part of the world is very unattractive, when you see those participating and the type of stress they undergo, stand in a queue for hours and hours just to cast their vote, stand in a queue just to get your voters card, sometimes they say there is no network and you have to wait or come back some other time, all of these makes us who don't even like politics in the first place to keep our distance.
What is the point of undergoing the type of stress people undergo to vote when in the end those votes won't even count? You can vote all you want only for the person who clearly is not supposed to win to emerge as the winner and end up forcing you to accept them as your leader or as your president. If elections were free and fair, I think a lot of people would want to participate in them without even being told or forced to do so, but the fact that elections are not free and fair contributes largely to the political apathy we see today. I think 7 out of every 10 people don't really want to participate in politics for one reason or the other, causing the number of people not involved in politics to be even greater than those involved in it.
Some don't just like politics; some have one reason or the other why they don't want to participate in politics, but most of the time it is because of how unfair every political gathering or involvement ends. Should the government prosecute those who fail to participate in politics? My answer to this is no, as much as that will cause more people to participate and be part of politics and also exercise their franchise and the right to vote and be voted for, but in this case it is now against their will and, in a way, a violation of their human right; it is something they are supposed to do but on their own accord.
Prosecuting and forcing those who are of age to participate in politics will definitely cause the political space to even be flooded, but trust me, the moment that force is no longer there, they will all go back to the default setting, so getting people to participate by force is not the solution to political apathy; rather, it is making politics attractive and something people will want to participate in on their own without even waiting to be told. Implementing measures to make the political process fairer and less stressful, along with other improvements, can encourage citizens to participate in politics voluntarily.
Images were generated using chatgpt.
