Governor Olusegun Mimiko, helmsman of Ondo State has spent a large chunk of time agonising over his next move. To be or not to be? Is the great man going to cross over from the Labour Party which provided him with the platform to be elected Governor in the first place or not? The people of Ondo State and indeed the nation are presumably waiting with bated breath as to which direction he goes.
Across the seas, a British Member of Parliament (MP), Douglass Carswell has not subjected himself to such agonising deliberations. He simply got on with it. He addressed a press conference during the week announcing his decision to move away from the Conservative party into the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).
In a democracy this is within his rights. He didn’t have a moral dilemma to solve either. He did the right thing by resigning his seat in the House of Commons even though there is no obligation for a cross-carpeting MP to resign. Having now forced a by-election as a result he will now seek to go back to the house as a member of the UKIP. This is fundamentally important since the platform in which he rode into the house was provided by his former party.
There is of course no constitutional reason for Carswell to resign. He could have hung on to his seat as a UKIP member until the next elections slated for May next year. However this would have been morally untenable which is why he did the right thing. This of course should be expected in a sensible democracy and there are precedents.
As every school boy knows in the 1970’s, the Labour MP and former senior cabinet minister, Dick Tarvene QC also resigned his parliamentary seat when he cross-carpeted. He easily won the by-election that was subsequently held in his Lincoln constituency.
Unfortunately, in view of the configuration of our political template no such thing is going to happen here when Governor Mimiko finally makes up his mind. If he decides to join the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), well that’s it. He is not going to resign and call for a fresh mandate on the platform of his new party. Perish the very thought!
This way of doing things is not peculiar to Mimiko. Some people have criss-crossed the political terrain in such a way that it is difficult to work out which political party they actually belong to this week. Actually they come and go, easy entry, easy exit. It has to be so since there is no discernable ideological difference between them.
There is a difference here with Carswell. In his live press conference he was unambiguous about why he was moving away from the Conservative Party. He enunciated his clear differences with Conservative Party Leader and Prime Minister, David Cameron over a whole host of issues, not least Britain’s continued membership of the European Union.
When Hamlet in the Sunshine state finally makes up his mind, it will be interesting to know why he is moving. What is the ideological dispute that has propelled him away from the Labour Party? It will be fascinating to find out about the internal party wrangling in the Labour Party over let us say, housing, monetary and foreign policy which pushed him out.
He has confirmed the well-worn position. For ideological disputes had no bearing over the defection of Femi Fani-Kayode, Nuhu Ribadu, the Senator from Labour who had much earlier moved from Labour to ACN now APC, Femi Lanlehin from APC to Accord etc. it will take a whole book to list the toing’s and froing’s.
There is really no mystery to unravel here. Perhaps it’s because the country is actually a one-party state. Even a one party state has internal dissensions. Even the one party state has factions and tendencies. This is not surprising since whatever the often regurgitated party line; no party is made up of zombies. For that is the nature of politics which in itself is a reflection of the human condition.
The key difference here is that a man like the British MP Carswell is an advocate of popular democracy. Such a perspective interprets politics as an activity which concerns ordinary voters as opposed to the position, views and interest of the political establishment. This is the critical difference.
The very notion of popular democracy does not have meaning or relevance here. Given the configuration it could not possibly have. This is why it doesn’t really matter which political party Governor Mimiko or any other politician is in this week.
Anyone who finds Nigeria’s criss-crossing political establishment perplexing needs not tear his or her hair out. Just remember a stanza from ‘Tommy’ the rock opera made by the British Rock Band ‘The Who’-
We bow our heads to the new revolution
As indeed we remember the old revolution
We won’t get fooled again!