Elections & Skullduggery- Prof R R Pillai
One Party rule has vanished from India and these are days of Coalition governments. Pre poll alliances and post poll support of elected parties both from inside the government and so called outside support has become the order of the day. These are political compulsions they say. Alliances can’t be wished away in a multi party rule governance when a single party fails to get a clear mandate.
What is questionable is the pre poll alliances comprisig of political opportunism to grab power by hook or crook. The case in point is AIADMK forging prepoll alliance with Left.The political ideology of these two parties hardly converge.But pre poll aliance suits to keep the adversary at bay. This is pure cartelisation in politics for power sake.
Again EC grants National Party status to Political Parties on the basis of garnering a certain vote share in elections and in a certain number of states. Since the National Party staus is not granted to Alliances but to singular Parties it becomes necessary for Parties to get reqired vote share exclusively on the basis of its own accord and not with the help of alliance partner too. Regional Parties can tie up with National Parties on a pre poll allince according to political convenience only to increase their vote share by this dubious means and get the National Party Status. Thus EC must look into these types of pre poll alliances that defeat the purpose of guaging the vote share of particular party on its exclusive ideology and principles.
Many a times these allianced paries come together in one constiuency but fight against each other in some other. Thats allowing an unethical elections to go on in the name of alliance. Parties must fight on their own as independent identities and not carry on this sham of prepoll cartelisation that gurantees power share through unprincipled contest in electios.
In coalition Era it becomes necessary to form groupings to provide a government.That is a legitimate combining to provide governance when the mandate is fractured. But pre poll alliance must be prohibited.For it enables to ghettoise electorates on the basis of caste and religion. These prepoll alliances prevents voters from having a healthy choice of candidates drawn from different ideology. EC must look into this unnatural alliances of Political Parties and also not to include in their vote share if obtained along with an alliance partner.National Party status or vote share percentage should be on the basis of exclusivity of parties’ performance and not obtained as political combine unit. In short ban pre poll alliances for fair and ethical elections, to strngthen India’s democracy,to free from ghettoisation on basis of identities that gets reinforced time and again.
