Who Wants Peaceful Campaigning?

Editorial:-

The general elections are not very far away. The actual voting might still be about two months later, but tramping has begun on the campaign trail and since the contestants have not been lined up yet, the public meetings have remained more general affairs so far, dodging specifics for wide-brush allegations and counters. This is a convenient approach for Sikkim because the immediate days after the official candidate lists are released make for several side-switching moves and redrawing of allegiances and party affiliations. It is really after that the campaign gets vicious because opponents are more clearly defined and stakes more clearly understood by those in the fray. Expect vicious fangs to be bared then as contestants take on contestants, youth try and out-shout youth and voters weigh their options at the constituency and state level. Precedence suggests that after the nomination process is completed, candidates get around three weeks till the State goes to poll. For candidates, that’s too few days, for lay people, maybe it’s too long a political session even if it comes only once in five years. Politics has already begun throwing up violence, and as the reality of elections sink in more, the confrontations are expected to get more brutal, because accept it, the political space is bereft of a pan-Sikkimese issue to ride as a wave, other than the conflict between change and continuum, which, essentially, is choice that every election presents. There is a clear clash of heavyweights, but is it enough to build as an issue to channel the entire campaign into? The ruling party has 31 of the 31 still represented constituencies, so, although it may have Opposition on the streets and public domain, it does not in the Assembly and hence has no one to blame for stalling policy interventions. The rest of the nation with its string of minority governments and coalition groups does not enjoy such luxury. In Sikkim, even the biggest Opposition unit is made up of till-recently ruling party supporters. So, clearly, the ruling does not have any Opposition to rant against. It has also been in power for 20 years, so it cannot blame anyone for things that have not have gone well. It will have to approach the people with its performance report and assurances of sustaining the development model it has prepared for the people. This approach might work for an academic debate, but can hardly trigger the spontaneous applause and involvement that politicians seek. As for the Opposition, its largest component was part of the system until earlier this term and the rest have only engaged intermittently. Apart from working with their already secured circle, winning the endorsement of even the disillusioned will take some work.

All this is not necessarily good for the people, because it leaves the leaders and their youth with only the option of marking their territories wider and establishing their primacy with muscle instead of issues and debates. Time is already short and by the time the candidates are announced, the countdown will be even more pressing putting too many political futures on too short a fuse. Minor clashes are expected when so many careers are on the stake, but these have already been indulged in so the trouble could be of a much bigger scale. It is thus urgently required that a clear signal is sent out that these stand-offs do not stray into the spaces of the lay citizens. And no, this is not something that the Election Commission of India or its micro-observers it will send can guarantee. A genuine aspiration for peaceful campaigning has to rise from the people. It is at times like this that Sikkim must miss the presence of genuinely apolitical social organisations. Given how small each constituency is, having a genuine social body representing the people from specific pockets could have led to a situation where such bodies would have written to every political party in the fray to keep the campaign peaceful and warned that in the event of peace being broken, punishment will manifest in the form of denied votes. Only an apolitical and genuinely representative social organisation of the people can ensure that such communiqués are taken seriously. In the absence of such organisations among the people, maybe the political parties should volunteer such an undertaking. But is not going to happen either. What is important then to bear in mind is that it is easy to be peaceful and non-violent when nothing is happening, the commitment to nonviolence gets tested when the resolve holds even in the face of instigation. As for the question on who wants peaceful campaigning? Everyone does.