DailyPost 2471
POLITICAL TREACHERY
The political developments in recent years and the ones unfolding in Maharashtra currently, forces us to define the term political treachery. It does not exist for the political class nor for the political parties. People are given a solid dose of it on a regular basis that even seeing and facing its consequences on a regular basis, they don’t have anything to offer as comments. For media everything is a spectacle, they start covering it from the first sniff to its final conclusion and even beyond. Is political treachery tantamount to constitutional treachery or that no one even position think of it today.
The country has been given an overdose of the numbers game and hence we have started believing that once you have the numbers by hook and by crook, you are the deserving one. This brings us to another conclusion as well, that instead of doing any decent politics, & the art of political conspiracy* delivers and there are any number of success stories to prove it and it growing by the day. Worse still, are the coalitions we work up, which makes a mockery of the elections, democracy and the constitution itself. How do find the will the people?
Who has the authority to find it out? The wheeling dealings happen in the backrooms, with terms, conditions and transactions unknown. The constitutional mechanism is there only to validate it; whether it is the governor or courts or the legislature, which has to open its doors to count the heads. It means counting heads in the bee all and end all of democracy. How far the anti-defection law reached in its purpose? The outcome of current politics clearly proves that it broken in smithereens, it is there and it is not there. It has become a functional museum piece.
The backdrop of this post has been fate of Shiv Sena last year and current fate of NCP as it stands now. This is just the precipice; it has been happening all over for a long time. The art of government formation today in most of the cases and more so in complex cases of numbers, betrays all constitutional morality and also the will of the people. We have a Chief Minister, who remains so, whatever may be the combination of parties, supporting him. We have a governor who can dismiss a minister all on his own. Things happen with ‘political behest’ as it called, machinations decided in the most undemocratic way, by people who have taken our will for granted.
WITH THIS FATE AND PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENTS HOW FAR REACHING CAN BE OUR GOVERNANCE?
Sanjay Sahay