By Lindsay Barret

As the New Year begins the people of Bayelsa State are preparing to engage in a repeat of the most important political exercise that they engaged in last year.

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC’s declaration that the December 5th 2015 gubernatorial contest was inconclusive, in spite of the fact that its own declared results showed that the incumbent PDP Governor Henry Seriake Dickson was leading in six out of the eight LGA’s in the state at the end of the first day’s voting, has created a lacuna in the political arena there.

As a consequence the conduct of the polls as well as the role played in mobilizing the electorate by the contending forces has come under intense scrutiny by serious political analysts.

The revelation made by the INEC Representative in charge of the December polls that he was approached by supporters of one of the contestants, and offered a bribe to deliver a fake result has raised serious issues. In a stakeholders’ meeting convened by INEC one of the contestants actually requested the removal of the INEC Representative thus raising further public anxiety over allegations of irregular conduct by that contestant’s supporters.

Now that it has been decided to conduct supplementary elections in those units where the results were cancelled in LGAs where results had already been declared the process of preparation for the new exercise has become increasingly apprehensive.

The most prescient cause for the halting of the initial exercise was the disruption of the process in Southern Ijaw LGA where violence and intimidation largely perpetrated by warlords claiming to be supporting one of the parties left INEC no choice.

When this occurred the general impression was that the supporters were reacting to the perception that they were losing across the state, but with the decision that compromised polls will be re-run in some LGAs where Governor Dickson had already been declared the winner the opposition party in the state is portraying the forthcoming exercise as a corrective measure that will level the grounds.

This scenario might strike outsiders as a surprising interpretation of the facts but Bayelsans have become accustomed to hearing fantastic claims of influential support from the centre for irregular conduct being bandied about by supporters of the APC.

As a result the propaganda value of these claims is generating considerable anxiety in the run-up to polls scheduled for this weekend. In order to comprehend the impact that this circumstance has had on the polity in the state one need only to pay attention to reports from the remoter communities of Southern Ijaw and Ekeremor LGAs where the support base of one of the parties is openly linked to well-known former militant insurgent leaders.

In the period between the last exercise and now while the incumbent government has been battling to overcome the consequences of the national economic crisis, especially as it has affected payment of workers’ salaries and pensions, the challenger’s supporters have mounted an underground propaganda blitz.