Election Commission faces credibility crisis

As the Central Election Commission (CEC) gears up to organise yet another “free and fair” General Elections, it is itself embroiled in a crisis of credibility.

The Chief Election Commissioner, Shri N Gopalaswami, has written to the President requesting the dismissal of his colleague, Election commissioner Shri Navin Chawla. According to the rules governing appointment of the Central Election Commission, the member commissioners of this body are appointed by the President of India. Gopalaswami has accused Chawla of being partisan to the Congress Party.

The BJP, which has been running a longstanding campaign for the dismissal of Shri Chawla, immediately stepped up the pace. On the other side, the Congress and the Left parties took up cudgels on behalf of Shri Chawla and condemned Shri Gopalaswami for impropriety. Meanwhile Congress organised leaks to media to show that Shri Gopalaswami was partisan to the BJP. After all the allegations and mudslinging, when it was threatening to become a major issue in the Budget session of parliament, the leaders of the Congress and BJP decided to resolve their differences, in order to ensure a crisis was not precipitated.

As the dogfight between the main bourgeois parties at the center and in the states has sharpened in recent years, the role of the CEC has become quite vital in determining the fortunes of the main parties. The CEC prepares the electoral rolls, determines the dates of elections, determines the deployment of security forces, as well as decides on petitions filed by the contesting parties against each other regarding violation of the rules governing the conduct of elections. Finally, the CEC pronounces the elections as “free and fair” and announces the results.

In his letters to the President, the Chief Election Commissioner also proposed changes in the terms and selection of the members of the CEC to improve the credibility of the Commission. He has proposed that a committee, which includes representatives of the government and leaders of the principal opposition party in the two houses of parliament, should select the members of the Central Election Commission. In concrete terms, he is suggesting that the Congress and BJP come to a working agreement on who should be selected.

The discredit of the Election Commission is part of the discredit of the political system and process. The suggestion of the CEC on making the appointment of the Election Commissioners bi partisan will not address the central problem of the discredit of the political system and process.

The bourgeoisie organises periodic elections merely to acquire legitimacy for its rule. This legitimacy is achieved by having a contest between candidates of various “recongnised parties”. Just recently, elections were organised in the state of Jammu & Kashmir, where it is well known, the people have been demanding an end to military occupation, have been asserting their sovereignty, and have repeatedly expressed their contempt for an electoral process which is designed to legitmise the military occupation. The Central Election Commission supervised these elections and declared them “free and fair”. This, in the face of the ground reality of the gun of the armed forces being used to threaten people to vote, as well as curfews imposed for weeks on end to prevent people from expressing their views on the elections. In other words, the bourgeoisie wanted its rule in J&K to be legitimised. The Election Commission carried this out. The will of the people of Kashmir does not matter.

The political system and process is dominated by the main political parties of the ruling class, like the Congress and BJP. Alongside these two parties, various other parties also exercise domination at the state level. These parties select the candidates who will contest, they openly use money power and muscle power to win elections, and they go to any extent, including inciting and organising communal and sectarian violence, and terrorist attacks against the people, to come to power. They stop at nothing, including rape and murder, to achieve their goal. These parties are financed by the biggest capitalists, and when in power, they carry out their bidding. The role of the masses of people, of workers and peasants, is reduced to being voting cattle. Through threats and inducements, people are forced to vote for this or that party, and in many cases, their vote is openly rigged with the state forces as well as private armies deployed to ensure this. The candidates of the main bourgeois parties spend crores of rupees for each seat, many times over the prescribed limit. All this is known to the Election Commission. However, it turns a blind eye to all this. At the end of each election, it pronounces them as having been “free and fair”.

The real role of the Central Election Commission is to legitimise the periodic elections organised by the bourgeoisie at the center and in the states, and to ensure that the dogfight amongst the principal parties do not go beyond a limit that could threaten the process of legitmisation itself. Thus when the whole world knows that Congress party unleashed genocide of Sikhs in 1984, and the BJP unleashed genocide of Muslims in 2002, the Election Commission of the time quietly supervised elections which brought these criminal parties back to power. 

What is required is that the domination of the political process by criminalised political parties be ended. This means political parties must be deprived of their right to select candidates and field them as their party candidates in elections. The selection of candidates must vest with people of the constituency. The elections in a constituency must be supervised by an elected constituency election commission. The elections to the state assembly, or to the central parliament, must similarly be supervised by a state election commission or a central election commission, both of which are elected bodies.

All this demands a radical rupture with the present system and process, a thoroughgoing renewal of democracy so that power actually vests with the electorate, and they are not merely rubber stamps to legitimise the rule of the bourgeoisie.