By Ajibade Abdullah Adewale
“Be wise enough to learn from the past, shrewd enough to capitalize on the present, and clever enough to prepare for the future" - Matshona Dhiliwayo
As Linguistics and African Languages Students' Association is in anticipation of her upcoming elections, it is of course apropos that a body of Electoral Committee that will oversee and ensure a free and fair electoral process be constituted. The constitution of the Electoral body has been done in the last congress which held on the 28th of October as enshrined in the Association’s Constitution.
In retrospect, the last election that brought the current administration in could be said to be a free and fair one on the ground of the electoral process (screening exclusive), however an insight into the upshot of the election would significantly be germane in the article.
Tellingly, the last Electoral Committee which could be assumed to consist of people whose stainless integrity could not be passed over, made a decision in trying to modify certain norms just to ensure that some aspirants could make it to the final stage of the screening. This, like I emphasized in one of my articles sequel to the upheaval that surfaced after the election would have been a very good decision of which the aftermath rendered their foresight less relevant.
According to a reliable source allegation, "some members of the last electoral committee bequeath preferential treatment to some candidates, while some were being partial, some were not even aware of what was going on, and this really contributed to the deficiencies after the election".
Consequently, the situation became worse when members of electoral petition committee(EPC) let their personal emotional clouded their judgement, thus, resulting to their show of partisanship and denied lalsites of proper accountability. Nevertheless, this would still be referred to the deficiency of the Electoral committee.
In view to avoid reoccurrence of what happened last year, the newly constituted Electoral committee which consists of members who were also part of last session's Electoral Committee, are expected to learn from precedence, failure of which, no excuse would be tolerated.
On a final note, I advise the Electoral Committee to be just in the process of decision making, Lalsites would not in any way condone favoritism or any foul play, and I would enjoin all Lalsites to be on their toes and report any unusual act to the appropriate quarters.
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