There’s power of political interest. Interest is a powerful force. Many things that happen are determined by personal interest. There are personal and collective [public] interests. Interest may not be monetary profit always. It may not be productivity, or gain but a special stake on a matter.
One of the businesses that is majorly determined by interest is not stock holding, shares, playing in a tournament, or running an enterprise, but politics. One thing that drives politics and politicians and has the capacity to collapse the system is interest. Oxford Advance Dictionary defines interest as participation in advantage, profit, and responsibility; share; portion; part.
It says further that interest is an advantage, personal or general; good, regarded as a selfish benefit, profit; benefits.
This interest we are talking of is different from:
- A fee is paid for the use of money
- A fee is paid for the use of a loan
- Excitement of feelings, whether pleasant or painful.
So,
What is political interest?
This is what is exhibited by a politician sometimes personal and or public to get from a political arrangement. In the place where I live, political interest hardly factors public/collective “interest” but personal. These political interests do not bother them with what the populace thinks or passes through but with what the active political partisan participants get. In my country, it is pervasive and horrifying. Political interests can go from single to many things such as;
- Consensus election [destroying regular democratic processes] or consensus screening [take a bow and go].
- Juicy job cum political appointment on juicy portfolios
- Juicy contract without due process, cost, and accountability of doing it
- Playing godfather or king-making
- Sharing of public funds, looting the treasury freely, and going non-convicted
- Rigging elections and being celebrated for it in the name of delivering his constituency.
Implications to Unbridled Political Interest
In every society with weak public institutions and agencies, political interest rules more than rules, laws, and constitution, and despots take advantage of it and rise dictatorially. The society is doomed.
The primary way to stop unbridled interest is by strengthening the institutions and agencies of government that make for due processes, standards, and qualifications for getting things from the government.
Our laws should discourage unbridled interest by stopping frivolities. Political interest destroys merits, due process, and standards. It kills.
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