Imkong Walling
Parliamentary elections in Nagaland are relatively unexciting affairs lacking the high octane emotion, tension and violence that have become the norm in state Assembly elections. Lok Sabha elections come and go, hardly leaving a memorable public imprint.
But exceptions do happen, a remark or action, leaving people with something to talk about, either of the disgraceful or admirable kind. The state Deputy Chief Minister, Y Patton’s unabashed endorsement of disenfranchising rural voters was one such exception but of the deplorable kind.
Electioneering for the PDA coalition’s Lok Sabha candidate in Wokha, on April 5, Patton took to his usual antic of enlivening the audience with humour. In place of individual voters exercising their franchise, he said that village leaders and polling agents should do the job on behalf of the entire village. “Spare them (villagers or the electorate) the trouble. Let them go to work in the fields. Let only the village leaders vote,” he said, eliciting laughter from the crowd, with some even clapping. The “star campaigners” of the NDPP-BJP combine, as well as the candidate, seated on stage, struggled keeping a straight face.
On most public occasions where bosses from the Centre are not present, the witty Patton tends to go off-script, peppering his speeches with off the cuff jibes and remarks, which would have the crowd in splits. This time, however, his attempt at humour admitted to the rot that has taken root in the state’s electoral process. He was quick to come up with an explanation, in the form of a press statement, terming the blunder “an ill-advised attempt at humour, told in the heat of the moment during a campaign event comprising of mostly party workers from different political partners.” It was clearly not a lapse of control, rendering the clarification baseless.
Light-hearted the joke may have been but a deprecatory undertone consigning the rural populace to no more than a demographic fit only for tilling the land was writ large.
He went so far as to claiming that even the news people present at the venue “did not choose to” publish his supposedly “tongue-in-cheek” joke.
As for the press/news community, the alleged act of ignoring the Deputy CM’s remark, if true, is not only embarrassing but unjustifiable. This particular segment of his campaign speech hit the public limelight only on April 7, two long days after it was blurted in public.
The silence and the palpable unconcern of the enforcement authority, known as the Election Commission of India and its Nagaland state chapter, are not surprising either.
The Deputy CM’s “joke,” the laughter, the silence is a manifestation of how normalised electoral malpractice has become in Nagaland. Proxy voting, vote-for-cash, villages or village councils dictating whom to vote for, the list goes on.
The writer is a Principal Correspondent at The Morung Express. Comments can be sent to imkongwalls@gmail.com
