Cases of broad daylight murder and robbery, cases of rape, pothole filled roads, administrative lapses in districts (read Chang and Yimchunger or Tikhir and Yimchunger)…Who questions the government?
Our Naga political greats (sitting legislators) cannot have the pick-holes-exercise now in the state’s situation, the vital part in the democracy. On the flip side, Opposition-less government would mean to give the legislators too much power to cause too much harm to our society.
We have consolation in Nagaland Pradesh Congress Committee (NPCC) President K Therie who is trying to fill the vacuum, but that is too less an effect.
We know arbitrary and despotic behavior of a government is checked by the Opposition parties in democracy but “to work for the Naga solution” the principal Opposition Congress legislators are now in the treasury bench. But if one has to give assessment reports of the years 2014 and 2015 on DAN-III push to the Naga peace process, the balance sheet would show more misses than the hits.
We know democratic principles and values are drained and emptied when you don’t have opposition parties in a government, a situation to fail the democratic mechanism. In other words, rooms for rejection of the injected democratic temper will be paved in a free-drive or speed-breaker free government as populism overwhelms the whole argument and consideration. The other trend is that you often see cases of brutal assaults on democratic principles, thanks to unchecked and unbalanced set-up. It brings into mind that in the absence of the Opposition front which is considered as the alert bell to a great extent, any decision of the government or the people at the helm will masquerade as the truth or the rightful authority. This is nothing but the devastation of democracy. This is also to say that no one is there for the policing job in such time when the government becomes despotic. Yes, we do have pressure groups and the media but they have limitations for the reason that they cannot gain much leverage in the absence of the Opposition. They can be only moral policemen but again if the other party is insensitive to moral bindings then the question of the former’s relevance crops up.
Meanwhile, we are to note that the ‘free-ness’ that is evident in the Nagaland Legislative Assembly today may lend energy and strength to the atmosphere that has potential to indulge in despotic activism.
