Noisy election and indifferent regime

Jeremiah Onaeme *

The hill districts (coloured) which would go to ADC polls on June 01 2015 :: Pix - TSE

Again, the recurrent fever of election is passing through our flesh this time albeit the electioneering falls from the high version of the State Legislative Assembly Election characterized by party operatives dusting in topless jeeps to smaller affair of the ADC Election with contenders spinning thread among the echelons of sorts, canvassing the hill electorates.

From the village chairman election to the US Presidential election, all candidates strongly speak of their manifestos. But many of them collapse to public criticism and few do only one-thirds of their words.

US President Barack Obama had accomplished his priority: getting Osama bin Laden dead or alive. But his audacity of hope fell into economic recession again. So, Mitt Romney—the Republican cockpit in the last Presidential race, said of him: “Barack Obama promised change; but he could not deliver it.”

So far India is concerned—the high-rise state of Gujarat, the plan to make India a manufacturing hub, the decisive nature of the saffron party, the prime minister’s high rhetoric, the mega scams of the UPA I and II, and of all, the need for change of leadership— are the driving force of the Modi Wave. But BJP bears a scathing indictment for failure on the secular front.

The observance of Good Governance Day on Christmas, the three-day prime ministerial meeting with the Indian legal luminaries from Good Friday to Easter Sunday this month bear the party’s first open message to India that a new government has come to murder faiths other than Hinduism. Four years of BJP Rule are due still. Which will outweigh the other: hits or misses?

With the coinage - The Switzerland of India - fallen from the lips of Lord Irwin, the princely state of Manipur seemed promising to prosper in peace through the horizon of time. But as complex a society as the Middle East, the once shining outpost of India, full-fledged to statehood in 1972, is being overgrown with issues and insurgencies.

Several governments have come to run the state but gone with scandalous records. Conventional ways of protest in Manipur such as self-immolation, burning effigies, month-long class boycott, month-long economic blockade, rallies, sit-in-protest, hunger strike and fast-unto-death only alarm the government to sterner defiance.

Despite Manipur State Congress Party boasting of its metamorphosis from Secular Progressive Front to absolute Congress Legislative Party, the ruling party is overshadowed with peril as the BJP giants, who have been traveling through the chicken neck, are eyeing to bulldoze the state in the coming 11th Manipur Legislative Assembly Election. A critical turn of mind decides every election and the overthrown governments meet political vendettas.

I do not intend to say that Chief Minister O. Ibobi Singh, after quitting the den, will face the similar fates of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in rope, former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in exile, former Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf in court, former Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi in secret desert grave. But what is questionable here is whether the saffron party can crack the CLP’s coconut of strong-chemical bonding or this thirteen-year old Congress hero can never be zeroed.

There are leaders. But the top leader of all leaders is fate-driven and has a unique course.

Be it students’ leaders or political heads, those who are ego-driven after winning elections are not leaders but opportunists, dancing with people during campaigns but distancing away from people during regimes.

People help them to get help from them. But if they intend to forget poeple, why should people make them great? An elected political leader cannot help every voter, leaving no stone unturned. But the appropriation of fund should be transparent.

As the ADC Election is going to sweep Manipur again, there are willing candidates with selves or people in their minds and with ambition as crazy a stereotype as being called the district councilors not minding the risk of plunging into bankruptcy or not knowing how much the fund-flow will be ; and there are electorates who want money before election because they cannot get any cash or kind from their elected leaders afterwards.

June 1: this magical number is nearing with the acid test. Let them fight for the seats. But they should mind their regimes after the noisy election.