By Rayyanu Bala
My elder brother Yuusuf Shehu Usman, Esq., mni, is right when he argued in his column on Facebook and WhatsApp page yesterday that party members are not slaves or zombies. Members have freedom of conscience as enshrined the constitution. This is
undoubtedly correct. A political party is not a master, and its members are not slaves. Membership of a political party does not extinguish a citizen’s constitutional rights, including the right to participate in elections and to exercise the franchise.
However, to me that is not supposed to be the question.
The more important question is: what does it mean to voluntarily belong to a political party?
When a person freely chooses to join a political party, he does so knowing that the party has its constitution, principles, programmes and collective objectives. Membership therefore carries not only rights, but also responsibilities, expectations and obligations of loyalty.
Nobody is suggesting that a party member surrenders all his rights to the party. That would obviously be an absurd proposition. But neither should it be suggested that membership imposes no meaningful obligation of loyalty whatsoever.
If a person consistently believes that the candidates of other political parties are preferable and intends to support them against the candidates of the party to which he belongs, then a legitimate question arises: why remain a member of that party?
One cannot continually enjoy the identity, platform, recognition and other benefits of membership of a political party while, at the same time, deliberately working against the electoral interests of that same party.
That is where the issue of political consistency and integrity comes in.
There is an important distinction between having a legal right to vote according to one’s conscience and having an ethical obligation to be consistent with the party one voluntarily chooses to belong to. The existence of the former does not automatically eliminate the latter.
Indeed, if a member has reached the considered conclusion that his conscience will not permit him to support his party’s candidates, he remains free to make that choice. But he should also be prepared to accept the logical consequence of that choice: he may no longer have a convincing basis for insisting on continued membership of the party.
Political parties are voluntary associations. They are not merely vehicles through which individuals obtain personal political identities while remaining entirely free to pursue contrary political interests. A person who joins a political party should reasonably be expected to identify, at least substantially, with its political objectives.
Nobody is saying that party members are zombies. They are certainly not. They are citizens with minds, consciences and constitutional rights. But being a free and rational human being does not mean being free from the consequences of one’s voluntary choices.
If I voluntarily join an association whose fundamental objective is to advance a particular cause, I cannot reasonably insist that I should remain an active member while systematically advancing the cause of its competitors, and then invoke my personal freedom whenever my conduct is questioned.
The issue, therefore, is not slavery.
The issue is fidelity to a voluntary political commitment.
If the argument is that a party member may freely support another party’s candidates whenever he chooses, that is a personal political choice. But if such conduct becomes a settled pattern rather than an isolated disagreement, then the more honest and principled course may be to leave the party and support the political platform with which he genuinely identifies.
There is nothing undemocratic about that.
In fact, it may be more democratic.
A democracy is strengthened when people are free to change their political affiliations according to their convictions. What weakens political integrity is not the exercise of independent judgment; it is the attempt to maintain membership and the privileges of one political organisation while consistently campaigning, voting and working for another.
Party membership should therefore not be understood as slavery. It should be understood as a voluntary political commitment.
And voluntary commitments, while they do not extinguish one’s fundamental rights, ordinarily carry corresponding responsibilities.
If one no longer believes in the party enough to support its candidates, or if one’s political convictions have fundamentally shifted in another direction, there is a perfectly respectable solution:
Leave the party. Join, support or campaign for the political organisation whose candidates and principles you genuinely believe in.
That is not slavery.
That is consistency.
That is political integrity.
And above all, it is an honest recognition that while nobody should surrender his fundamental rights to a political party, nobody should also expect to remain a loyal member of a political organisation while deliberately acting against its core electoral interests without inviting legitimate questions about the sincerity of that membership.
