one right, manifestoes are great help. In functioning democracies, they allow candidates and political parties seeking legislative and executive offices to inform voters what to expect if and when they get the mandate. Like fair advertising, they make the marketplace of political alternatives competitive. Also, once a party has been in power, they provide a yardstick against which to measure its performance.

In practice, given the various distortions of the political ecology, the matter is not so simple. For one, most, if not all, manifestoes read very similar. This is understandable as parties try to take the pulse of the populace and align their manifestoes to popular aspirations. Thus there are promises to improve the economy; accelerate development; provide social protection and essential services; end unemployment, hunger, disease and poverty; combat social ills; protect rights and freedoms; and ensure security. This, of course, is the easy part. The question of how these desirable objectives will be achieved is often not answered in realistic/ convincing detail. Nor are the hierarchies and priorities very transparent. As a result, a plain reading of the manifestoes alone is not always the best guide to how one should vote.

What about past performance? For one thing, since not all parties have been in power or under similar circumstances, this makes comparisons difficult. Should one compare the rhetoric of a party that has been in power and another that has not; or the record of one and the rhetoric of the other? Whichever way one looks at it, the solution is less than satisfactory. Also, when the elected governments do not get a constitutionally mandated full term, the parties plead force majeure and wish to be judged for their intentions and what they might have achieved rather than what they actually did. Given the difficulty of agreeing on what might have been, this comes down to whose projections one wishes to believe – which is far from the firm ground of objective, verifiable facts.

Worse still, there is no constitutional/ legal guarantee that an elected government will actually pursue the goals and objectives outlined in its manifesto. A party can thus promise the voters something and be elected on account of its presentation and then do exactly the opposite. While such behaviour is rare, in a less extreme case, the most prominent campaign promises can be relegated to lower priorities.

Given the difficulties, the Special Report this week sets out to analyse the way some of the major parties have sought to position themselves and what it might mean for voter choices. Read on.