The Election Commission of India’s new regulations to ensure there are no extraneous or unfair influences in the outcomes to the Assembly elections in five states, namely Manipur, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Goa are novel and welcome. However, since the elections to these states are as far apart as a month, there would be many who wish a way was found so that the gap was narrowed down to the minimum. Manipur had its elections yesterday, in a largely peaceful process, except for an incident of macabre violence in which militants fired at a polling booth at Chakpikarong in the Chandel district, killing seven and injuring more. The condemnable nature of the violence needs no further elaboration, but what is pertinent to our original observation is, for Manipur which is the first to go the polls, the wait for the results is unfairly long. Not only is this about the killing suspense everybody in the state, in particular all the candidates and their supporters would be put through, but also about the governance vacuum this would create. The ECI’s logic is perfectly understood. It does not want the trends in one state to influence the voting decisions of the electorate in other states which go to the polls later. However a month of waiting for the results of an election is a little too overstretched.
In reality, for an entire month, Manipur would be under a caretaker government, which can only think of maintaining a semblance of day to day administration and not see in terms of policy visions and programmes that extend into a future. Until as long as the ballot papers remain sealed in the ballot boxes, or should we say in the digital storage of the electronic voting machines, Manipur would be under a government without a clear mandate, neither bound by responsibility and duty to the electorate nor by the demands of office. Most likely, governance during the period is going to be at best moribund, for those in the government would be acutely aware of their lack of moral authority in carrying out their normal governance duties during the period. They would neither be able to act with confidence or firmly on most matters. The contrary could be equally true, and many who are unsure if they would return after sensing the way the polls went, may decide to make the best of the one month they would still be in power to aggrandise themselves. Politicking for the formation of the next government would have also begun in the backdrop, with men who are likely to be frontrunners in the race for the top job, selectively favouring or sidelining prospective supporters or dissidents as the case may be. Unhealthy grouping around political poles within the same parties could also stymie normal functioning of the government. Surely nobody would dispute the general perception this can result in no good at all.
If the ECI had envisaged there would such long gap between the polling and result declarations, therefore the government formation processes, what ought to have been done was for those states which have to wait long to be placed under President’s Rule briefly, so that the grey area of prolonged caretaker governance is avoided. This would also have been to the ECI’s purpose of ensuring absolutely free and fair elections, for then none of the parties in contention would have gone to the polls as the ruling party and thus the new chapter of governance would have been allowed to begin on a clean slate and a much more level playfield. However, what’s done cannot be undone. We do hope in future this lacuna is looked into.
We also hope the one month of suspense does not result in any untoward incidents. Elections are always high tension affairs, especially for those who have high stakes in them. In the emerging tradition of governments in the state, marked by a client-patron equation between those in power and their crony businessmen/contractors, the rivalry goes beyond politics but spill into contest for control of business/contract turfs. Elections here thus are also often akin to a high stake venture capital investment overtures, where prospective business/contract beneficiaries put in huge sums of money in the campaign for their candidates and parties in the hope of reaping hansom dividends in the next five years if their candidates win. As in all business rivalries, the friction can often explode in violence, sometimes resembling mafia wars. Declaration of the results would deflate the tension, but unfortunately this can only be after a month under the present dispensation.
Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2012/01/undeserved-suspense/