Monday Musing
[ Amar Sangno ]
From a national political perspective, getting off with 10 unopposed elected MLAs is a mammoth political score, as the electoral game has just started. The BJP has every reason to go wild in celebration and lap up its grand start.
The saffron party has managed to pull the strings, getting off the mark with 10 unopposed legislators, including Chief Minister Pema Khandu, Deputy Chief Minister Chowna Mein, and three-term MLA Dasanglu Pul, the wife of late chief minister Khaliko Pul.
Congratulatory messages from the party colleagues are pouring in for Chief Minister Pema Khandu for his political power play in decimating the opposition. Political analysts and pundits might have jumped out of their skins, seeing the number of BJP legislators winning unopposed before the polls in Arunachal.
History is repeating itself. The BJP is following the same path that the Congress had done 10 years ago.
In 2014, the Congress party, under the then Chief Minister Nabam Tuki’s leadership, had won 11 seats unopposed, and the BJP under CM Khandu just fell short of equalling the Congress party’s record.
In fact, every assembly election in Arunachal is a foreseeable game. Democracy is often butchered by the ruling government here. Be it the Congress or the BJP, whoever is in power gets the ‘butchers’ knife’. The innocent voters have little choice to participate in the democratic process and exercise their adult franchise.
Some aspirants gathered courage to take on the ruling party’s candidates by filing nominations, thus giving hope to the people participating in the electoral process, but they are being crushed and forced to withdraw. The biggest irony would be an opposition candidate posing for a picture with ruling party supporters on social media after withdrawing his candidacy.
The people celebrating democracy without election is perhaps the best way to define the tribal way of democracy.
Lately, the principal opposition, the Indian National Congress, in Arunachal has earned the sobriquet of ‘withdrawal party’. The party had given tickets to many aspirants who later withdrew their candidacies and paved the way for the ruling party candidates to get elected unopposed. Is it a new kind of business to earn money in a short time, or is it fooling the innocent voters for the sake of their personal aspirations to be hand-in-glove with the ruling party?
Party heavyweight and former CM Nabam Tuki left his last bastion, Sagalee, to BJP candidate Techi Rotu and opted to fight for the MP election from the western parliament constituency. Similarly, in a surprise move, former PHED Minister Takam Pario joined the BJP and decided not to contest against BJP candidate Balo Raja in Palin.
The Congress is badly battered and bruised, abjectly reduced to a forlorn house. Now the party’s hope revolves around former home minister Kumar Waii to keep the grand old party’s flag flying high in the assembly election.
In a few constituencies, the battles are yet to be fought, which would give true meaning to democracy, regardless of the amount of money spent in buying voters by the respective candidates. True democracy is when people are equally given opportunities to choose their leader, rather than being forced to accept one as a leader.
