Describing an election should not be difficult

To vote is to pick from many offers, namely, to make a choice. The synonym to elect implies that you are well informed to make a good choice. On June 20, The Nation had this example on page 23: “Voters pick choice for Malindi ward candidate” – three whole terms (to vote, to pick and to make a choice) which mean the same thing.

For to vote is to pick, to choose, to select or to elect from many offers, whether these be humans (of the kind who, from time to time, seek parliamentary seats), or whether they be but ideas (of the kind proposed, say, by a constitutional draft).

To pick is to choose from, for example, a number of goods that the market offers or to make up your mind whether these be but the political piffle of the kind that faces Kenya’s voters during an election. Indeed, the choice you make is the barometer with which we can measure your socio-mental maturity as a voter.

The kind of MP onto whom Kenyans latch every four years is the measure of whether the Kenyan voter is really mature in terms of social knowledge and moral awareness concerning the kind of society the Kenyans want their politicians to lead them to. That is why a nation’s top class is called the pick of that nation, namely, its cultural and intellectual elite.

FROM FRENCH

Indeed, English has borrowed the word elite from the French verb elir, which means to elect, to choose, to pick.

Without any spelling change, the French adjective elit (feminine elite) is what has led to the English noun elite, which refers to a nation’s top econo-politico-intellectual class. From the French infinitive elir (to choose, to elect, to select), English has borrowed the noun elite to refer to a society’s top culturo-intellectual class.

Religion, too, especially Euro-Christianity, alleges that, at “the end of time”, Jesus Christ – Euro-Christianity’s son of god – will descend from heaven to take with him back to heaven the elite of human beings, namely, those who have lived according to the socio-moral dictates of a Euro-Christian book called the New Testament.

THE BALLOT

As a concept, then, members of the elect of a country, namely its elite, have not reached their position through any election of the kind that Europe’s liberal class has in recent centuries imposed upon the human world, namely, the ballot. The elite are seen as a country’s top class merely in cultural, intellectual and economic terms, though the English, who up to now still deeply defer to the French in terms of culture and language, have acquired the feminine French adjective elite without Anglicising it in spelling or in pronunciation.

The Euro-Christians, for instance, speak of themselves as “the elect of God”. But, as an adjective, the word elect implies that members are well-informed, well-behaved and adequately grown-up to make an objectively educated choice for a whole nation, a statement which none of you can make for the elite of any nation, especially Kenya’s.

Philip Ochieng is a retired journalist.

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