With less than a week left for the bye-elections to two constituencies in Nagaland, campaigning, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, is in full swing. Amidst ‘boisterous rallies’ and active social media outreaches employed by candidates as well as political parties, one thing is curiously missing in action this time around – the campaign for a clean election.
Is it an admission of the failure of such campaigns in the past and thus an exercise in futility? Is the pandemic holding back its proponents? Is the platform too small to warrant such exercise? Several other queries linger.
The Nagaland Baptist Church Council (NBCC), the apex body of the dominant Baptist churches in Nagaland, which constantly sounded clean election bulge before any election is conspicuously silent. Ditto for others, particularly students’ organisations- vocal proponents of such campaigns in the past.
While clean election campaigns (CEC) have been regular features in elections since it was first launched in 2011, the NBCC-spearheaded initiative during the election to the 13th Nagaland Assembly in February 2018 was the biggest yet.
Guidelines for CEC, among others, range from non-acceptance of bribe to honour the individual right and freedom of choice to vote for God-fearing, principled and capable candidates to disallow multiple voting and proxy voting etc.
On the other end, the activities of the State electoral machine, which used to be proactive in creating awareness about electoral malpractices as well as adopting various measures to ‘cleanse’ too is tepid.
While the ‘Model Code of Conduct’ (MCC) - a set of guidelines for the conduct of political parties and candidates are ‘rigid’ with comprehensive on do’s and don’ts in place, a sense of pro-activeness, unlike in the past, is missing.
Among others, the MCC prohibits creating ‘mutual hatred or cause tension between different castes and communities, religious or linguistic’ and “corrupt practices”; and offences under the election law, such as bribing of voters, intimidation of voters, impersonation of voters, canvassing within 100 meters of polling stations etc fall under the code.
Electioneering in Nagaland, as often argued, is however peppered with layers of intricate issues. Apart from the personal configuration, tribal, clan and village dynamics among others play a huge part while the presence of non-state actors, at times, also complicates the matters. Affecting each level of the electoral politics, these are the biggest stumbling block to campaign against corruption or clean election.
The CEC in Nagaland, thus, is hampered by an endemic disconnect between idealistic intention and stark ground realities. This makes the campaign appear to be an insurmountable task and a lost cause in the state, as guidelines are often grossly violated by different stakeholders during any election.
As a result, there were always scepticism and apathy when clean election exercises were undertaken given the state of affairs in Nagaland. However, campaigners had never shied away from taking up the cudgel, if not for anything, as a matter of moral principle. Regretfully, this is missing.
This shouldn’t have been the case. Despite drawbacks, small incremental changes were taking roots. The practice of common platform during the last Assembly elections is a case in point. For the Naga society to overcome one of the biggest challenges to a democratic society – electoral malpractice in varied forms, a sustained campaign is only the way forward.
