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EC versus netas

Cho Ramaswamy, the venerable Tamil journalist and honourable member of Parliament, wrote recently that the only time there was 'consensus' in Parliament these days was when the obituary references were being passed.

The editor of Tughlak could well have added two other occasions when our politicians 'cutting across party lines' show a remarkable ability to momentarily drown their differences and agree on something.

The first is when they quietly sanction obscene hikes in their salaries and allowances, usually on the last day of the session before cocks crow in the capital; when even the 'boy-anchors' (courtesy: Arundhati Roy) are in bed.

The second is when their very survival is at stake -- when they see merciless interlopers by their bedside, determined to cut off the oxygen in an act of mercy-killing that almost always has the nation's tacit okay.

The latter instinct is on display just now as our usually squabbling netas join hands in rejecting the Election Commission's directives requiring candidates to declare their educational, financial and criminal antecedents.

That our politicians who couldn't agree on whether K R Narayanan was a good guy (to be President again) and whether Narendra Modi was a bad guy (to continue as chief minister) are suddenly singing in sync is revealing.

But the greater irony is that our usually fractious and bickering tu-tu-main-main politicians are united on the two electoral issues that seems to bug the consciences of everybody except them: money and muscle power.

Secular or socialist, communal or communist, self-preservation is the name of the game.

On May 2, the Supreme Court asked the Election Commission to draw up new norms for poll eligibility and contest rules. In particular, the Supreme Court wanted the Election Commission to ascertain:

1. Whether the candidate is convicted or acquitted or discharged of any criminal offence in the past, if any; whether he is punished with imprisonment or fine.
2. Whether in the six months prior to filing of nomination, the candidate is accused in any pending case of any offence punishable for two years or more, and in which charge is framed or cognisance is taken by the court of law.
3. The assets (immovable, movable, bank balances, etc) of a candidate, spouses and of dependents.
4. Liabilities, if any, particularly whether there are any overdues of any public financial institution or government dues.
5. The educational qualifications of the candidate.

The Supreme Court gave time to the Election Commission till July 1. The Commission, by all accounts, tried to get the government into the act by suggesting an amendment to nomination forms and adding the requisite provisos to the Representation of the People Act. When no response was forthcoming, the Commission proceeded on its own.

According to the Commission's June 28 directive, candidates contesting an election have to file an affidavit providing details of their educational qualifications, criminal antecedents, and financial assets and liabilities. Returning officers were vested with the power to reject nomination papers on the veracity of information provided in the affidavit.

Its directives hit our politicians where it hurts most.

Suddenly, the political establishment woke up. It sees the Supreme Court on the one hand and the Election Commission on the other appropriating to themselves functions of the nation's highest law-making body, Parliament.

Suddenly, there is loose talk of 'judicial activism' from the very people who silently applauded when the apex court bravely took decisions the executive and legislature were loathe, even afraid, to do.

The basic thrust of the parties' argument against the Election Commission directives is:

• It would be virtually impossible for any political activist with innumerable cases registered against him for political activities to list all such cases. Moreover, the scope for political manipulation of the stipulations by rivals to stymie the candidature of some candidates is huge, as is arbitrary action on the part of the returning officer.
  
• Declaration of the educational qualifications against the grain of universal adult franchise that is enshrined in the Constitution. Moreover, voting patterns in a largely illiterate country such as ours are rarely, if ever, determined by the educational qualifications of a candidate.
  
• Only elected candidates need give a breakup of their financial assets and liabilities to the Speaker of the House. In other words, declaration of assets is more practical AFTER the election not BEFORE.

So, the very people who have sat over the Dinesh Goswami report on electoral reforms for 10 years say they will draft a new bill 'this weekend' which will be passed in the monsoon session beginning July 15.

So, the very people who have ensured that the N N Vohra Committee report on the nexus between politicians and criminals never sees the light of day for seven years say they will now do something to set its house in order.

So, the very people who have allowed the Women's Reservation Bill guaranteeing 33 per cent seat reservation for women to never come up say they are 'racing against time' (Law Minister Jana Krishnamurthy).

The gameplan is to ensure that the new law, not the Election Commission's directives, will apply for the July 25 election to the Rajya Sabha from Maharashtra. What speed, what alacrity!

On one level, in rejecting the Election Commission's directive and in projecting it as a turf war -- 'Parliament's powers to make laws cannot be encroached upon by either the courts or the Election Commission' (former law minister Arun Jaitely) -- our parties are offering a ringside view of the insecurity of the people who are running our lives and deciding the fates of our children and grand-children.

And, on another level, by raising the bogey of 'unguided missiles' (Minister of State for Law, Ravi Shankar Prasad) in the form of returning officers summarily rejecting nomination papers for false or incomplete information, and/or on the basis of false and motivated complaints, our politicians are only revealing the wafer-thin edifice on which their fortunes rest.

But there is a third, more deeply disturbing aspect to the stand of the 21 parties which rejected the Election Commission directive. Which is their sheer and utter contempt for the information that every voter must be allowed to arm himself with before he troops to the polling booth on voting day. In the world our politicians inhabit, ignorance is bliss.

So, built into this dubious argument about the Supreme Court and Election Commission trying to usurp its powers is the belief that, somehow, 'We, The People' are not entitled to know if our wannabe-representative is a killer, murder or rapist. Somehow we are not entitled to know how much assets he holds and how he made his loot. Somehow we are not entitled to know what he has studied.

The parties' determined bid to ensure that the voter does not get the information that he requires to make up his mind -- BEFORE the election -- ties in perfectly with the cliché that it is our politicians who have intentionally kept our masses illiterate and ignorant. Because the more they know, the more perilous their future gets.

No one will dispute Parliament's powers to make new laws. But the reluctance so far in cleansing its stables of criminalisation and corruption on its own… And the grisly prospect of corrupt and criminal elements who are already in Parliament providing inputs on the new law 'this weekend' to bar people of their ilk from entering the House is hardly reassuring.

As, indeed, is the tone and tenor of the parties' rejection of the Election Commission's directives. If they have a problem with a clause here or a clause there it is one thing. But if they respond to the threat to their very source of existence by diluting the Supreme Court judgment and the Election Commission directives to the point of negating their impact, then 'We the People' will have been hard done by.

In whatever manner M/s Krishnamurthy, Jaitely & Prasad may couch their opposition to the Election Commission directives, the people of this country will not but be struck by the hilarity of it all. If our IAS and IPS officers, who come from distinctly cleaner backgrounds, can be subjected to police verifications, how can the antecedents of their future-bosses be glossed over?

The Election Commission directive is intended at disclosure not disqualification. All it is seeking to do is make more information on the candidate available to the voter. If our politicians were clean, would they have to worry at all? But their stupendous reaction shows us why we are not at all wrong in being cynical about the motives and objectives of our politicians.

The parties' opposition to the Election Commission directives is so hilarious that we could keep laughing till the go-maata comes home. Unfortunately, they are dead serious in their intention to protect their turf and keep a bad thing going.

Cho was right. Only the dead can hope to receive a consensus in our polity: 'O Cracy-Dem, beloved husband of T Ruth, loving father of L I Berty, brother of Faith, Hope and Justice expired on July 8, 2002.' (courtesy: Ashok Mahadevan)

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Krishna Prasad