How the DPP is strategically ‘flooding the zone’

The playbook of politics has a plethora of strategies for politicians on how to maneuver. The goal is to win the attention of voters and be on their side.

Therefore, they stop at no kind of a barrier to get wherever you are and like their ideas, however appealing or otherwise they may seem. So long you give them your attention.

Flooding the zone is a strategy often linked to U.S. president Donald Trump.

It involves issuing a torrent of information aimed at overwhelming the opposition and the media and creating confusion.

Remember the first week of his second term how president Trump clogged the airwaves and the newsprint with a barrage of executive orders.

The news media worked frantically, trying to make sense of the executive orders, as the president on the other side, persistently signed more and more orders.

In Malawi, the opposition, especially the DPP, has perfected this strategy and seasoned it with politics of grievance victimhood.

As I wrote this piece, no scholar criticized this strategy.

But in this short piece I want to argue that ‘flooding the zone’ is one of the, perhaps dirtier, tricks in the politics playbook given the vulnerability of our Malawian society.

This strategy is inherently undemocratic because it aims at exploiting illiteracy and limited attentional capacity of the people.

Ostensibly, U.S citizens are far better than Malawians in terms of literacy. So, flooding the zone has far reaching consequences in Malawi than in the U.S.

Flooding the zone

Those who are social media junkies like me, you find yourselves in a state of utter confusion and exhaustion.

Scrolling through your smartphone or computer, you are likely to bump into text, picture or video aimed at discrediting the credibility of the September 16 General Elections.

Some influential opposition figures as well as wannabe news pages regularly post content primarily aimed at stocking disenchantment against the Malawi Electoral Commission.

The messages are heavily nuanced and premised on nothing but unfounded claims.

Meanwhile, tension is boiling over because of the misinformation surrounding the electronic management devices (EMDs).

This is no mistake nor coincidence, in fact, it is part of a plan. All this cacophony is aimed at creating confusion in the minds of Malawians, especially those whose intellectual capacity is limited.

So, seeing this every day, I can’t just fold my arms and let it go unabated. I suppose you feel the same way.

This overload of information is hinged on creating confusion, diverting attention and limiting people’s ability to clearly discern what’s going on.

What’s at stake is the election and all that the masses want to hear is how leaders vying for various positions will articulate sticky issues such as poverty, hunger, youth unemployment and others.

But all the attention has been to vote rigging claims by the opposition, particularly the DPP.

Distraction and democracy

In essence, democracy is conflict and contest. Strategic distraction is but one, perhaps unseemly, tactic in political maneuver.

Morally it’s messy, but politicians use it anyway.

So, if you ask the DPP’s strategists, they will likely say what they are doing is mere strategic distraction. Fine.
That’s allowed in politics. But this is not a strategic distraction. It’s something else.  

Ordinary strategic distraction often aims to confuse the opponent and the media. But in our case, such isn’t the case.

The ruling MCP seems unfazed with the DPP’s distortionary tactics. So does the media.

All the media is doing is just pass on overloaded messages to the masses every day.
However, the flooding and confusion is below the news ecosystem.

No wonder, if you go to any village in Malawi today and talk about the forthcoming elections, you are likely to meet confused voters.

That’s not a strategic distraction. Rather, this is flooding the zone—confusion! In a mature democracy, focused attention is key in a healthy public discourse.

Meanwhile, in Malawi our attention is scattered among a litany of vote rigging claims and that’s dangerous to our weak society.

Allow me to explain how.

Look, many of us are already limited in literacy meaning our decision making is already affected by such cognitive limitations.

In addition, our limitedness in accessing information as well as limited time worsens everything further.

The point is, decision making is affected or constrained by the information available, our cognitive ability and the time.

Now the question is do people have enough information on the purported imperfections of the election management devices? Do rural people who even can’t read and write have the intellectual capacity to analyze and synthesize all this? Do they have the time?

Obviously, the answer is negative. See, what the DPP is doing is taking advantage of your limitations. They know you have no information. They know you are handicapped cognitively. And surely, they know you have no time. 

In the end, you will be confused and buy their unsubstantiated claims of vote rigging. Remember, this the election management devices they endorsed right from the start. They knew about it all along. 

You see, flooding the zone is a political strategy aimed at decapitating you from seeing the big picture. Rather, it seeks to confuse and disorient you.

And the DPP is doing exactly that. I hope now you know better. Isn’t it?