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Begging The Question
Every political system in the world is imperfect. While
assessing a system, one has only to look at how imperfect a
system is. There has to be continuous change in the system and
its operation. In every democratic country, this effort is on.
After all, the right to change the procedures, rules and
regulations is basic to democracy. There are many such movements
globally, in almost all democratic countries, as part of the
basic definition of a democracy . Thus, the only thing that is
permanent to a democracy is Electoral Reform.
It is in this context that one has to
consider what our former Chief Election Commissioner T S
Krishnamurthy had to say on voting system. At a discussion in
Chennai on bipartisan politics and policy making, he did some
very welcome plain speaking. His audience included the Mayor of
San Antonio, Texas, Phil Hardberger, the U S Consul General
David T Hopper and the Vice Chancellor of madras university S
Ramachandran.
India's voting system should be changed,
Krishnamurthy observed, to protect the territorial integrity of
the country and to improve the quality of democracy, in the face
of the rising influence of a growing number of small parties
based on caste, community and religion. His main concern seems
to be that the national parties are not allowed to achieve much
in the Parliament or in the States. This is a problem with any
multi-party coalition government. Even if the main party in the
ruling alliance is sincere in doing something, its hands are
eternally tied, as they have to continuously depend on the
smaller supporting parties. The Indo-US nuclear agreement is a
case in question. The Leftist parties have succeeded in delaying
its conclusion.
Krishnamurthy has another concern too, which
cannot be ignored by any right thinking citizen. While political
parties promise many things, the end product was ' unfortunately
not in consonance with some of the principles of the
Constitution or the Representation of People's Act', he has
observed.
What is the solution? Naturally, there has to
be a drastic change in our voting system. We have to have the
right to recall. We have to have a system which would make every
party accountable. Krishnamurthy's recommendation of the
American Primaries may not work here.
Whatever be the solution, it has to be
implemented by the very political parties, which are responsible
for the creation of the problem itself. This is just begging the
question.
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H Ramakrishnan
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