Criminals, illegal money mar polls

By Kalyani Shankar

The election season has brought to focus once again whether the political class wants cleaner elections. The answer is an emphatic no. It is because political parties need to wake up to the fact that people no longer have faith in them or even in the system. Vexed with non-governance, corruption, price rise and inflation people say they have had enough, and that is happening all across the country right now.
There have been huge concerns about the chinks in the electoral system. It is not as if other countries do not have this problem. It is a far more sophisticated form of corruption that takes place there. In the US Corporates make contributions, through lobby groups and they have the concept of soft money, fund-raising dinners and that is how they influence and change the policies.
India has been a functioning democracy and power has changed hands 15 times smoothly. Almost all political parties have ruled the country either on their own or part of a coalition. What should worry us is the splintering of the polity. Gone are the days of one party rule and the coalition has come to stay. Cleansing elections is the most important route through which corruption and maladministration can be curbed. Obviously, this calls for urgent and practical electoral reforms along with fundamental governance reforms to enhance people’s empowerment and participation.
A look at the Parliament shows that nearly a third of MPs – 158 of 543 face criminal charges. There are more than 500 criminal cases against these lawmakers, hailing from across the political spectrum. But how did criminals come to dominate in the first place? There is a vicious circle where political parties claim that it is the voters who elect them, whereas the voters claim that in the absence of NOTA, they have no choice.
All parties notionally agree that people with criminal records should not contest elections but in practice they resist any attempts to enforce this, be it through NOTA, the Lokpal bill or the Supreme Court ruling, disqualifying any politician convicted for more than two years. Are there fundamental flaws in our political system? Can we identify and attack the root causes instead?
People lose faith because muscle power and money power have taken over our democratic system. No one can say that our Parliament and political parties have not had enough time to act. It is no coincidence that the comprehensive Electoral Reforms Bill has been pending before Parliament for the last two decades.? If Parliament, the supreme institution in a democracy, refuses to act substantially on matters relating to the ethics and rectitude of its own functioning, what recourse do the citizens have? That is why they go to the courts and the initiatives taken by the Supreme Court have, therefore, considerable public support.
Secondly candidates by and large hide campaign expenses. During the 2009 general elections, nearly all of the 6753 candidates officially declared that they had spent between 45 to 55 per cent of their expenses limit.  Excessive, illegal and illegitimate expenditure in elections is the root cause of corruption. Therefore, across the board, parties have tried to cope by favoring candidates with black money and the networks. Such candidates, whose political foundations are built on lawbreaking, typically hijack the political system for private profiteering.
Thirdly, the voter fatigue is setting in slowly. Gandhiji said during freedom struggle, “You should be the change you wish to see in this world”. We blame others for voting wrong candidates, forgetting the fact we do not bother to go to the polling booth.
Since 1990, there have been at least seven hefty comprehensive government-commissioned reports for electoral reforms including the Goswami Committee, Vohra Committee, Indrajit Gupta Committee, Law Commission Report and Election Commission of India – Proposed Electoral Reforms (2004). If there is an overwhelming consensus about these reforms, why have successive governments sat on it for more than two decades?
There seems to be great reluctance on the part of the political system towards any attempt at reform. The major concern is the mindset of the political establishment that since they control the power of making laws, no laws can and should apply to them. They have no overriding motivation to change the current system because they are its biggest beneficiaries.
When it does not suit them this pattern of changing the laws, often through an ordinance, was again in evidence in 2002 when the Supreme Court decided in the ADR case that candidates contesting elections will have to disclose criminal cases pending against them. The same thing happened when ADR sought copies of income tax return of political parties in 2008. We see this repeated now with the central information commission’s decision of June 3, declaring six national political parties to be public authorities under the Right to Information Act.
NOTA is just one among a series of efforts being made to restore power to the people in the current Assembly polls. The fact that it took more than 12 years to come into practice shows there must be something potent about it .The logic is that NOTA would build moral pressure on political parties.
Will the negative vote lead to cleaner politics in India? Will it bring to bear moral pressure upon political parties? And if cleaning the politics requires total rethink and reform of our electoral structures, it is time to start the process. This will encourage honest and good candidates to enter politics. The entire process and effort for political and electoral reforms is to change this mindset of political parties. Democracy can indeed function only upon this faith that elections are free and fair and not rigged and manipulated with money and muscle power. [IPA]