It is pertinent to delve some more on the likely drawbacks of the prolonged wait for the result of elections to the 10th Manipur Legislative Assembly held on January 28. The anticipated government limbo on account of this is extremely ill-timed as February is the concluding month of the financial year in this country, and the Union Budget for the coming year would be out on the last day of the month. Not long after, the state too would be holding its own budget session. It is true in all the years that have gone by, the annual budget session has not been taken too seriously by successful governments. These sessions as well as the budget documents to be discussed and passed have been in the nature of annual balance sheets of the government, and thereby in their essence, an accounting affair. Under the circumstance, most of them could have been done better by a chartered accountant, for they seldom, if at all, have been a vision statement of a government. But, many in the intelligentsia in the recent past have been trying to induce the government to incline towards the latter and were hopeful that there would be an attitude shift in the near future. This Assembly limbo at such a crucial time of the year cannot but be considered encouraging from this standpoint. It has been just two days since the elections were held, and so it may yet be too early to comment on the how the caretaker government would conduct itself for the next one month, but it is expected that it would be a joyless job for those in shadow power of circumstance. Who would be enthusiastic to begin any meaningful work now, knowing full well it could be others who claim the credit for them. We do however hope and trust the present team would at least be committed enough to keep the normal functioning of the government mechanism intact without slackening too much.
On the positive side, at least the election office would be in a better position to study the performances of its officials on the ground on the day of the polling and decide on how many repolls are to be held now that it has over a month to accomplish this mission. Since there is much more time than usual, we hope and trust it will be able to tie up all loose ends satisfactorily. This is important considering the number of complaints pouring in, especially from the hill districts, of malpractices at the point of the gun by militants. Since the voting procedure included individual mug-shot of voters taken against his election ink stained finger prior to casting of vote, it should not be difficult to determine if there have indeed been cases of impersonations. If the number of votes polled and the number of pictures do not tally, the answer to this question would become obvious. There have also been complaints of intimidation and coercion of voters outside of the polling arena. On this count, we suppose there would be no foolproof way of accounting them or taking remedial action. This is basically a policing lacuna and nothing to do with the election office. But then, intimidation or no intimidation, voting was done in secrecy, so once inside the booth, the voters would have had the freedom to make the choices they want. At least from this point of view, there can be no doubt this time it would be a popular mandate on who should be in power in the state.
But the election this time, as have been noted by many, would be interesting for the verdict on at least two other issues. One is on whether the popular aspirations are still in congruence with what many underground organisations think they are. There was a virtual ban on the ruling Congress by a group of powerful insurgent organisations and if the people still vote the Congress into power, or even as the single largest party, it should serve as an alarm bell for the concerned militant organisations to introspect and read the bold writings on the wall. The other issue at stake is the question of faith, or call it challenge if you please, to the idea of Manipur as a federal home for many different ethnic groups. The entry of Nagaland chief minister, Niephiu Rio’ Naga Peoples’ Front, NPF, into the election fray, campaigning on a variation of what the United Naga Council, UNC, has been championing for some years now – that of dismembering Manipur to create a separate administration for Naga of the state, is the case in point. It will now be known if this dissenting view of Manipur has popular support when it comes to the crux. Whatever the verdict of the electorate is let the lessons the verdict offer be learnt by all concerned.
Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2012/01/badly-timed-limbo/