People unsure whether to vote for politician who already fulfilled promise BEFORE the election

They wonder if their vote will be of any use since the work is already done

Bonnet Bots Untrue News Service

Naani amma, a local resident of Jugnutelaiya in Rajasthan, was speaking to Bonnet Bot about a very peculiar problem facing their electorate. She was befuddled as she explained. “Every election, for several decades, we have been diligently voting for whoever promises to fix the market road and improve the locality in its vicinity. Now, this new guy came as the candidate of the incumbent party in power, and promised the same thing, which we thought was like a seasoned politician, and we had even decided to give him our votes. But now, he has coerced his own party, pulled some strings and actually fixed the road and the locality, that too, the FULL work is already completed BEFORE the election. In fact he did it even before the model code of conduct came to be applied. Now that the road is fixed, do we vote for him?” She sounded really bewildered.

“Now that the promise is already fulfilled, we are like confused. Are we like, supposed to vote for him again or not?”, asked Parineeta, a Millennial, who was quite excited to be voting for just the second time in her life. Naani amma spoke again. ‘After having already fulfilled a promise, does he think we will believe a politician can fulfill TWO promises in a row, and make us fall into the same trap twice?’ she asked. ‘Does he think his voters are dumb or something?’ she demanded.

Bonnet Bot explained that the situation here was slightly different, because he HAD actually fulfilled the promise, so it wouldn’t count as falling into the trap TWICE. “Oh” she said, with an expression of a realization hitting her. But almost without skipping a beat, she somehow continued, “Well, if this is how he behaves, how can we be sure that he is really a politician? How can we trust him?” she demanded. “Tomorrow he will go about doing stupid stuff that they call long-term ‘work’ instead of giving freebies to us—what happens then? No, its too big a risk. We should go with our tried and tested politicians—a known devil is better than an unknown naive, non-politician”, she added. “Look at Delhi—they wanted a non-politician, and see what they have got themselves into. Na baaba na… I don’t want any risk”, she concluded.

Parineeta, the millennial, stepped back into the conversation, asking “Would you pay for something you already have? No, right? Then why would we vote for an issue that has already been fulfilled? Now we can use our vote for some other promise, where we have at least 0.2% probability of our promise being fulfilled, instead of a case where our vote is 0% needed, because the promise is already fulfilled. Being an educated voter, I know that 0.2% is greater than 0%”

Now we can use our vote for some other promise, where we have at least 0.2% probability of our promise being fulfilled, instead of a case where our vote is 0% needed, because the promise is already fulfilled

Panglu, a local politician from an opposing party stated, “It is common political sense, that you first promise something in return for votes, and then if you win, you try to show that you tried doing the work. But if you complete the work, that too before the election itself, whats the point? Now what will he promise for the next election?”

At the time of going to press, the naive politician’s party was reportedly planning to dig up the built road, to ‘play it safe’. His political strategists said it would be beneficial, since they could repeat the promise of building that road, thereby using the same ‘marketing materials’ from the previous campaign. But the final decision was pending from high command.

Image credit:

• Annie Spratt, Unsplash.com (confused electorate image)
• Evgeny Nelmin, Unsplash.com (Naani Amma image)
• Arun Sharma, Unsplash.com (millennial image)