Political Science

There is an increasing trend on the political arena, where many parties are engaging in the complex process trying to involve everybody in selecting their candidates. The time and financial constraints to make everyone learn about the leadership qualities of each and every contestant is a major setback to the quality of the decision made by the voters in such primaries (Pennings 2001). The decision made in such an electoral process is therefore not based on the informed choices, but rather on the emotional motive of the democratic participation. The more logical the process is where the local parties directly choose a suitable candidate through appropriate means executed by the party officials. This ensures that the candidates chosen are well vetted by close people whose judgment is much more considerable for it is based on the true potential of the candidates (Rahat 2009).

This paper gives a critical approach in this current trend in political parties toward the widening participation in choosing parliamentary candidates. It opposes the move for this proposed change in the general participation and supports the old process of having the parties select the candidate and involve the wider population only in the main election.

The widening participation is introducing an increased voter apathy and boredom as many of the voters have an access to very limited information about the candidates presented for the primaries. In places where the process has been adopted like in the US a gap in the voting age has always been a disturbing trend as the older population gets more involved than the younger generation (Norris et al 1995 a). This creates room for having skewed results as the candidates propagating the ideals of the voting age groups usually carry the day. It is difficult to have a fair representation among the various age groups as the rest of the population remain adamant in getting involved in a process that very little is known about the candidate, they therefore prefer waiting for the main election (Norris et al 1995 b).

The process of a wider presentation takes too long to be implemented shifting the concentration of many people from more important issues of national development to elective politics (Carty et al 996). It is arguable that the time used in these extensive primary elections can be used to formulate more focused manifestos for the parties. With proper use of this time more civic awareness can be done in the grassroots to popularize the candidate that will take part in the general election instead of wasting that time seeking opinions about the candidate. Such a move would ensure that the partys candidates have interacted well with the general populace and the decision made in the ballot will be based on informed choices (Hazan 2002).

The attempt to have the public involved choosing party candidates is also a very expensive affair. The candidates and the party organizing the process end up spending a lot of money that could have been used popularizing the party for a longer period of time. The process of raising money for such contest starts quite early before the onset of public participation, this in extent forces the main operations of the party to be delayed as everyone seeks to get on ways of gaining popularity (Hazan et al 2006).

The new process is, unfortunately, dominated and controlled by the media. The media dictate the direction in which thousands of the undecided voters would cast their vote on the partys candidacy. The position of the media in most cases is not set by principles of national interest but on their invested interests vested on the contesting party candidates (Norris 1996). The position of other media houses is shaped by the amount of money that some candidate may have invested in them. For this reason the process may end up favoring a candidate that could not have been suitable for the party. In the old process a small group of the party officials and professionals would made decisions based on the knowledge of the candidates but not on the propaganda from the media, the process therefore gives more authentic results than the ones propagated in the current trend (Gallagher et al 1988).

There is a threat of developing bitter personalized battles between the contesting candidates as the wider groups of people decide on a suitable candidate from amongst them. This is because some of the party candidates might be tempted to speak ill of the others to win the public favor. This situation can then adversely affect the running of the party and eventual preparation of the major elections (Cross 2008). In addition, the process of wider participation lacks peer review mechanisms that are important in assessing the qualities of the party leaders. Such qualities can improve the search by partys executive in suggesting suitable candidates that the party can suggest for presidential run offs (Cross 2008).

For these reasons it is clear that those propagating for the current trend of the widening participation of choosing party candidates are doing so at public expense and there decisions are not informed. Though the current political trend is logical in the way of improving democratization process, its demerits overweighs the merits (Norris 1996).