H.H. Mohrmen
If politics is all about power then election is simply the time for the politicians to align and realign themselves to achieve that goal. Potential and opportunistic candidates are switching side from one party to another for the sake of a ticket to contest in the next election and almost every party has at least one sly candidate who had hopped from one party to another. Rather, this time around almost the entire of list candidates of some of the political parties comprises those who had at least defected from one party.
Will a politician who had not defected even once from one party to another raise his or her hand? Surely, except for the first timers in politics, almost all politicians have defected, because even if those who were elected as independent MLAs join another party, it means they have defected. This raises the pertinent question as to whether politicians have any principles at all. Do they stand for any principle or ideology at all because we have examples of politicians switching sides from a party with a liberal ideology to that of religious oriented party with right wing inclination and then back to a party with a similar ideology again?
Do party ideologies really matter to them? This is the question that voters should ask because nowadays politician change sides like chameleons. In the past when we had only the Congress and few regional parties as major contenders for power in the state, it was easy because the politicians are either regionalists or liberal nationalists, but now things have changed. Now we have many national parties with different ideologies and even within the regional parties we have what we can call liberal progressive regional parties and those with radical protective ideologies but even between these two ideologies, politicians move seamlessly from one border to another, not bothering to prove where or what they stand for.
It is therefore proven beyond doubt that ideology or making a stand on any issue is the last thing that politicians and political parties have in their scheme of things because their only goal is to capture power. Politicians also think that they can only perform if they are in power, so aligning with any party which they expect to come to power after the election is their only goal. But then we also have politicians who switch sides because they are not allotted party tickets and join another party which has a completely different ideology from the previous one if the party guarantees that the candidate will get a ticket to contest in the next election.
I am fortunate that my interest in community work takes me to different places and I have the opportunity to visit particularly villages in the Jaintia hills and of course since it is also election time, it also give me the opportunity get the local perspective of the villagers on different matters pertaining to the election. This helps me acquire some point of view on the villagers concept of an ideal leader or who according to them is a good leader or rather what do they look for in a person to elect as an MLA. It is also an opportunity to understand their perspective of development or what exactly is that which they consider as development?
In some areas that I have visited, development means having black-topped roads which connect their villages with a town or a city. If this is done they consider that the MLA has done his job. Of course roads are the backbone of development but the important question is whether the mandate of an MLA is merely to ensure that all the roads are blacktopped. Is all that the MLA has to do for five years? And if it is the duty of the politicians to bring blacktopped roads then what do we need the engineers for? Is access to better health-care, higher education and creating livelihood opportunities for the people to improve their economy not equally important?
But the most common grounds on which the people vote a person to be an MLA is because he is accessible, which means he is a good person with whom they can talk to whenever and whatever they feel like. And of course the voters also expect the MLA to (without fail) visit them during bereavements and show-up during their children’s birthday celebration and weddings. This is one of the most important qualifications for a candidate to be elected as an MLA, because if the MLA visits the family during these socials occasions, then the family is considered to be in a better pecking order in the community.
Voters also expect the candidates to arrange ambulances or a mortuary van if and when they need one and in some extreme cases even if some member of their family is arrested, they expect the MLA being a powerful man in the government to intervene or interfere with the law of the land on their behalf.
Then there are people who hero worship their MLAs. They consider their MLAs almost like a demi-god. No wonder we also call them ‘lei san snem’ because people create a larger than life image of their hero. Right now in my opinion there are two set politicians that people worship as heroes. The first category is the extremely rich politicians. Their followers believe that they can buy their way to anything anywhere. They believe that there is nothing that their hero cannot do because money after all can buy anything.
These politicians or rather these political families can set up whosoever they choose as candidates (as long as he/she is member of the family) and yet people will follow them without question. It matters not if the candidate is educated or not; or if he/she has any experience in public life or not. The hero worshipper will follow the leader like the mice in the story of the pied piper of Hamelin. People follow them or their candidates because they say that they are too rich to lose the election or for that matter anything at all.
Then there is another group who hero-worship their leaders, because they see them as the messiah and believe that they are only ones who can save the ”jaidbynriew,” (the community). The reason is merely because their leaders are the only few MLAs that dare to challenge authority. At one point of time they even have the audacity to compare one of them with u Tirot Sing Syiem and there are plenty of such hero worshippers lurking in the different social media platforms on the internet.
There are also other factors that influence people to vote for a candidate. It could be because he or she is from the same village or the same area, the same clan, belongs to the same church or faith tradition; the list is not exhaustive. It is really funny to learn the reason or the basis on which the people elect their MLAs, because they elect them for all sort of reasons except their capacity to be a legislator.
Recently, a private meeting was convened by the UDP MLAs and candidates contesting from different legislative assembly constituencies under the Shillong city and the attempt was to have an informal consultation with some prominent personalities of the city before they hit the campaign trail. Of course this is not the first time that the party has engaged in this kind of exercise, but this one has raised a very challenging question. A renowned and only Khasi who had served in the United Nations challenged the party leadership by asking the people on the dais, if they dare go to the people and take the issue of corruption as the party’s agenda.
We are yet to see parties which take corruption as the main plank to contest the election, However forward looking the manifesto is, as long as there is corruption the state will not go anywhere. The prevailing situation gives rise to spineless candidates who would dance to any tune if it only suits his or her interest. In situations like that, this course of aligning and realigning for the benefit of the politicians will continue and the state will also continue to have the same kind of politicians albeit in a different uniform.