ABSTRACT
This chapter is an ethnographic analysis of my own election on 31 December 2007 as representative of the largest constituency to the National Council, the upper house of parliament. I show how the Council elections became a test for the later Assembly elections. The mock elections trained voters for Assembly elections, but the Council elections took place first. Although Council candidates cannot belong to any political party, voters ascribed party affiliations to different candidates. Their victory or defeat were perceived as indicators of the possible result for Assembly candidates later. Hence, Council elections became thoroughly politicized by political parties and supporters who saw a stake in their own electoral fate. I also show how the Council elections became a theatre for communities to recast latent conflicts in local society. Families, communities and community leaders took sides with different candidates to express and play out existing conflicts. The Council elections became a mirror of social relations within the community by exposing networks, kinship, solidarities, fissures and tensions. While ECB advocated free and fair elections based on the merits of the candidates, local communities used candidates and elections as an idiom of fighting out their own conflicts or crafting new ones
