The election is over. The Government and the opposition are already installed. Maybe this is the right time to think about the process as well as the system that has given us our Government as well as opposition. The process that housed our legislature is democratic and constitutional. But maybe we have to ask the all-important question: have we really exploited it to its fullness? May be there is more democracy to come. To do this we have to get out of our Platonic caves and do the act of the mad man Nietzsche. Plato tells us the parable of a cave where everyone was chained to the walls and was enjoying only shadow images. Maybe we have reduced the frame or the field of the process of election to a fight of a few parties. There is a script on it. But maybe we like Pontius Pilate think that what is written is written and that’s the end of it.
Maybe a stretching of our thinking or bending of our mind that we all need to do as citizens will challenge us to leave the comfort of Platonic caves and embrace the courage of the mad man who comes with a lit lantern and make our declaration that the crippling electoral system and process is dead and we have to bring new breathe and life into it without unmaking our democracy as well as our constitution. This means we do have the challenge to think outside the box that is controlling our mind and convincing us to a limiting thought that the playfield of the electoral process is the best that we have established and saw in operation to this point. Here is the catch. We think that we have reached the pinnacle of the electoral process and there is no room for further progress. This position resonates with Francis Fukuyama who declared that history has come to an end with the rise of democracy. This crippling belief makes us think that there is no democracy to come and convinces us that there is no alternative to what form of democracy we have.
Now we are struck to this few parties who stir our feelings for our nation, religion and fellow citizens and elections are conducted and we think that we have finished with the electoral process and established democratically elected Government. It is true that we have put up our democracy back into operation but is it all about democracy? Is there no democracy to come?
Maybe we have to open the closed field of the electoral process. This requires us to deconstruct some of our beliefs that hold us captive and render us to submit to what we may call the TINA syndrome of democracy. TINA is the sense of closure of our mind that says that ‘there is no alternative’. We are destined to the reigning condition and we cannot do anything about it. The electoral process that is limited to a few parties and persons who stand as independent candidates have to be revisited. The electoral play field has to be opened to embrace more players. To do this we may have to blow the myth that thinks that elections cannot be bought without money bags.
To manifest let’s do a thought experiment. Let us take up a constituency and imagine the electoral field of play within it. Is it limited to three or five parties and some 11 or 12 persons who have money and hence will fight the election? Can we open the play field to bring in more players? What will happen if we have 50 to 200/500 hundred candidates? Maybe we have the challenge to lose and not just win to get the best out of our democratic process. Suppose we have 200 independent candidates, what will it do to the election booths, the EVMs and the electoral process as well as the system? Maybe the willingness of 200 hundred persons who are ready to lose their deposits can reveal the short comings of the EVMs too. Hence we do have the challenge to become mad candidates who are willing to lose and save our democracy.
Maybe the willingness of 200 hundred persons who are feeling to lose their deposits can reveal the shortcomings of the EVMs too. Hence we do have the challenge to become mad candidates who are willing to lose and save our democracy. There is more democracy to come. Are you willing to be the proverbial mad man/woman? It can show us the fault lines of the EVMs as well as need of money bags to fight elections. We may to go back to the ballot paper. That too will have to be a booklet. The EVMs as they are now may not sustain the secrecy of the vote. This is because several of the election agents will be enabled to decode whom one will vote based on the location of the voter who has to stand in front of the EVMs.
We can still breach the secrecy of vote. We can do it even in the present condition. This does not require us to hack the EVMs. What we need is scented fingers with intelligent pacing of the voters. We have to set up a few voters who we are willing to share whom they vote. Put a strong sent on their finger, place them in the voters line intelligently and then secretly smell the fingers of other known voters to determine if the person has voted for the desired candidate.
Thus, there are ways of out-smarting the smart voting machine to destroy the secrecy of the vote. Therefore we have to agree that only a mad can manifest fault lines in our mad election system. Goa can show the way to our country. Are Goans willing?
(Fr Victor Ferrao is an independent researcher attached to St. Francis Xavier Church, Borim)
