A rite of PASSAGE

So an­other elec­tion in which I am un­able to par­tic­i­pate comes and goes. I know that I and other con­trib­u­tors to this mag­a­zine have voiced our frus­tra­tion in the past about not being able to vote in a coun­try we have made our homes for the past twenty plus years, but to sum­marise for those who are un­aware of the sit­u­a­tion, as res­i­dents we are al­lowed to vote in local elec­tions but we would need to change our na­tion­al­ity to vote in re­gional and state elec­tions. In my case, this is get­ting harder rather than eas­ier to ac­cept as I get older, mainly due to the fact of feel­ing in­creas­ingly po­lit­i­cally im­po­tent when I want to add my grain of sand to the pile, as it were.

How­ever, there was one huge dif­fer­ence with this elec­tion, and that is the fact that, hav­ing turned eigh­teen, my son is now old enough to vote. And that means we at least have one po­lit­i­cal voice in the house­hold. But that is where the dilemma comes in. He’s eigh­teen and there­fore old and ma­ture enough to cast his vote how­ever he sees fit, but as his po­lit­i­cally neutered dad, I felt some de­sire to in­flu­ence his de­ci­sion and have him vote as I would, thereby en­sur­ing I do have a vote after all. An eth­i­cal dilemma, I think you will agree. Or maybe you won’t – maybe you think I was being ma­nip­u­la­tive even con­sid­er­ing ap­pro­pri­at­ing his vote, or the op­po­site, that I should ob­vi­ously in­flu­ence his vote, it’s my right or even duty as the pa­tri­arch of the fam­ily. What­ever you think, I know what I was think­ing when he asked me my opin­ion on who to vote for. And, as al­ways for an Aquar­ian whose life mis­sion it is to pour forth the wa­ters of knowl­edge (see As­trol­ogy 101), that was ed­u­ca­tion: this was my chance to help my son un­der­stand the work­ings of democ­racy and his role in that.

Now, as the long-suf­fer­ing off­spring of an Aquar­ian fa­ther, my son is more than used to ask­ing for a sim­ple piece of in­for­ma­tion and re­ceiv­ing an en­cy­clopaedic re­sponse he re­ally didn’t want, so it didn’t take long for him to stop me in my tracks thus: “Dad, I just want to know who you would vote for and what you think about the var­i­ous par­ties, I don’t need a lec­ture on democ­racy and how it works”. Duly chas­tised, I pro­ceeded to out­line my po­lit­i­cal un­der­stand­ing of the var­i­ous par­ties and can­di­dates, until the in­evitable ques­tion came: “And who would you vote for?” Just as I was about to launch upon a long and no doubt tire­some ex­pla­na­tion about him not being obliged to vote in the same way I would, he added, “Be­fore you start, don’t worry, I’m not ask­ing be­cause I feel obliged to vote as you would, I’d just like to know”. So I quickly re­fo­cused my re­sponse and told him.

At the end of it all, as we were walk­ing back from the polling sta­tion to­gether – I wanted to ac­com­pany him on his first vote, de­spite my own po­lit­i­cal in­ca­pac­ity – I smiled to my­self as I con­tem­plated the fact that the boy who had lis­tened to his dad blath­er­ing on at him for so many years was now a man with fully-fledged opin­ions, and a vote, of his own.