Dr Asangba Tzudir
Of late, the idea of a common platform to know the ‘principles, policies and promises’ of intending candidates for elections is seen as a viable option not only to know the ‘worth’ and ‘value’ of the candidates but as a process of ‘Clean Election’, an endeavor led mainly by the Church organizations.
The experiences of the general assembly elections over the years has attested that the very process of the conduct of election has been plagued by various forms of malpractices, let alone the absence of a democratic process.
Within such a ‘normalized’ condition comes the call for clean election. However, the challenge being, the very notion of ‘clean election’ is still in the process of its conception. The term has a bearing on the political, social, religious, cultural and moral aspects of clean election, and it is within these aspects that clean election needs to be envisaged in order to create the process of clean election.
Clean election has a soul spirit and the spirit needs to be provoked by these very aspects in totality as part of the conscientizing process, and wherein institutions like village councils and various civil society organizations need to first locate the ‘soul-spirit’ of clean election to roll out the process. This process and processing which creates a process is crucial to the preparation for a common platform. Without the process, the common platform becomes meaningless. This common platform can only be taken as the culmination of the process.
Having said that, there are certain key roles which these institutions need to play as part of the preparatory process. First and foremost, the very notion of clean election as it now operates should be acknowledged of its limit and the threshold. And therefore, these institutions need to delegate responsibilities to concerned groups including the church leaders because the invoking to this process of clean election calls for a collective responsibility.
The call for a collective responsibility led by the village councils and various civil society organizations requires concerted efforts of sensitization, that a collective responsibility tantamount to building a stable government and for equitable development. While the process should be build upon a communitarian framework, the Village councils and civil society organizations first needs to deny the old ways and pledge to themselves become a part of the process. They should also be at the fore of sensitizing the need for voting as a moral minimum, as an individual’s political and moral right without interfering in others rights or taking away others rights, and which also has a moral bearing on one’s integrity and therefore the need to vote clean with a free will.
As a society, the consequences of the trends of election and its associated dirt is seen in its fullest as can be, and while suffocation is felt desiring a change for better, it is paramount that each and every individual especially the elder generation be sensitized about the need for preparing the groundwork towards rebuilding a better future for the younger generation.
Having such a process in motion is necessary to create a common platform.
(Dr Asangba Tzudir contributes a weekly guest editorial to The Morung Express. Comments can be emailed to asangtz@gmail.com)
