Crime of passion!
The election to parliament and a few state legislatures due this April-May will be held under an updated Model Code of Conduct including strictures on political parties and contestants making promises they cannot keep. Interestingly, the Election Commission was ordered by the Supreme Court to incorporate the restrictions by introducing a section on manifestos in the MCC, facing opposition or non-cooperation by the overwhelming majority of the country’s 57 recognised parties. The SC order on manifestos came last July after it heard an election petition on vote-buying ploys such as distributing electrical and electronic appliances disguised as social welfare schemes in election manifestos as seen in Tamilnadu. The release of the revised MCC last Friday is timely as parties are preparing manifestos, some by even taking public inputs and doing it constituency-wise as the AAP is.
The EC in emphasising that manifestos should contain only promises that can reasonably be fulfilled, laid down three norms. One, there should be nothing repugnant to the ideals of the Constitution. Two, welfare measures or other promises should not vitiate the purity of the poll process or unduly influence voters. Three, manifestos should indicate the rationale for the promises and broadly indicate how the funds to fulfil them will be found. “Trust of voters should be sought only on those promises which are possible to be fulfilled,” the EC explained. The need to spell out the means to deliver election gifts, is what riled most parties. The court had ruled that making promises in an election manifesto cannot be construed as corrupt practice under electoral law, although it said: “The reality cannot be ruled out that distribution of freebies of any kind, undoubtedly, influences all people. It shakes the root of free and fair elections to a large degree”. With this ambivalence on goodies remaining, only 23 parties attended a consultative meeting with the EC last August and only four responded to the draft EC circulated last month. CPM and a Sikkim party accepted it, the BJP rejected it and Congress got the specificity on declaring ways and means watered down.
The guidelines are in place, but the general view at the consultation with the EC was of parties considering it their right to make promises they saw fit during campaign. Some, such as the BSP, even said they will not have manifestos to list poll promises. In other words, it will all be in speeches. Indications are, the prevalent culture of political permissiveness militates against the new clause on credibility of election promises. More so, when action over MCC violation relies on complaints and offending candidates or parties are seen to get away with an apology and reprimand. Here, it is the voting public that should demand accountability from parties and candidates who make promises that will draw on public money one way or other. There is a cost to every gift, whether those that can be bought in the market or are those like infrastructure and industrial projects, or even a new state, which impacts national revenue and others that may touch on defence and foreign policy. Tamilnadu CM’s party manifesto released on Tuesday promising milch cows and other usual freebies across the country along with vexatious promises of national and foreign policy import, is a case in point.
If elections are fought on promises conveniently made in the heat of the moment and electors are disinclined to hold their representatives to account, that’s handing legislators and parliamentarians the defence of diminished responsibility. That makes everyone complicit in this crime of passion against the liberal democracy we value.
If elections are fought on promises conveniently made in the heat of the moment and electors are disinclined to hold their representatives to account, that’s handing legislators and parliamentarians the defence of diminished responsibility.
