With the coming and forth of state general election the conversation about buying of votes has reared its head once again; this time around with much more indecision owing to the trend it has followed suit incessantly. Vote-buying can be described as an economic transaction in which parties and candidates distribute monetary/material benefit to individual citizen in exchange for their support at the polls. The practice of buying votes is both illegal and corrupt but, even greater than wrong, vote-buying perverts a democratic system.
In a true democracy, the political parties are expected to campaign and to provide a better argument than the opponents and competing to convince the citizens that they have the better message and vision. When a candidate chooses to pay for support rather than compete fairly for votes, they show a disregard for democratic norms and a willingness to use illegal means. Vote buying enables poor governance and undercuts citizens’ ability to hold their elected officials accountable. This has been prevalent in our society and at such depths and extent that we are fairly revised about the dilemmas it casts.
The organizations and groups which have initiated pragmatic steps in informing and creating awareness among the citizens about the urgency for a clean poll, and particularly for those in the remote areas as well, have done a job all too well. As all the good citizens await to embark for a new era of clean politics, the bet reside upon how the parties and the candidates would respond to the call for a clean poll—keeping in mind the case, given the disproportionate influence of vote-buying on the most vulnerable members of the society that arguably seem to have a greater need than the community in which they reside. Given that this group of people is most likely to be the people that vote during election, they will have an overwhelming impact on the election result.
The greater question the people ought to prompt confront is, “can we afford to miss clean election?” We have to face the facts of how obsolete our urge and attempt for a better governance would corrode to should we fail to perambulate the test this time around. And though the section of informed people could hinder the alluring proposals the candidates may confer, the majority of the ill-informed and the incognizance of the skeptics could what be the determining factor for the end result. This would only impact regression and slow growth in our socio-economic aspects. Democracy offers no sanctuary for the elected representatives to acquire position vis-à-vis buying votes and other corrupt means. And to deter this viable menace, a suggestive consolidative reform could be to embrace the enticing inducement from whomever who partakes to deliberately subscribe to this illicit malpractice as a means to reciprocate over his detrimental corrupt authority and misuse of monetary asset to influence the mass, and to cast the suffrage only to those parties or candidates who concur and abide to submit his/her candidature adhering to true democratic norms of clean election. Because unless any requisite valid step for a clean poll is not commenced, the outcome is obvious with that of the elected representative siphoning off public funds to rehabilitate his expenses spent. This trend has left larger serious implications upon our society which has resulted in non performance of output impairing every dynamics for growth.
We have to own our own share of responsibility as it is ours alone. It would be a futile exercise to solely count on the political parties and the candidates participating in the upcoming polls to practice fairly the requisite compliance of true democracy. The much needed challenge we face today is that every citizen should be essentially aware or made informed about the benefits of a clean poll or the repercussion of the aftermath if the later inflicts.
