Over the last two decades, in a display of some kind of misty-eyed, son-of-the-soil sentimentalism, political commentators, mostly urban, have been investing the toiling masses with more and more sagacity. Every election result has been seen as a display of wonderful wisdom on the part of the teeming voter, whose unerring acumen has kept the bad guys out, ushered the good guys in, and taught a lesson to the errant. If that is the case why have things been steadily deteriorating, with bad governance giving way to worse?