The Clean Election Prayer Rally initiated by the Ao Baptist Pastors’ Fellowship in collaboration with the District Administration and District Election Officer, Mokokchung on Tuesday was the right action and the right time. However, it was unfortunate that an election-related violence happened just the night before it. These two contrasting events in Mokokchung town that happened within a span of a few hours clearly suggest that the quest for peaceful and clean elections by conscientious right-thinking citizens and the propensity to resort to unethical and violent electoral practices by anti-social elements both exist in our society. And then there are people who believe that clean elections will never be possible in Nagaland, who even sneer at people who propagate clean elections. Likewise, there are also people who believe that clean elections can be possible in Nagaland and that those who resort to unethical and violent means during elections will eventually give up their ways and the transformation would happen slowly in time.
With so much negativity and pessimism overwhelming our society today on all fronts, there are reasons to believe that things will never change and that we are destined to remain like this forever, especially when it comes to elections. However, this defeatist attitude should be rooted out from the heads and minds of the people. Before change can be brought about practically, we must first of all believe that change and transformation is possible. Albeit being discreet and slow, there are clean candidates and citizens slowly beginning to participate in electoral politics elsewhere in Nagaland. It is difficult to say whether there are any clean candidates in Mokokchung as of today but we must keep on believing that there will come a day when we will also have clean candidates seeking our mandate. The reason why there are no clean candidates in Mokokchung today is simply because the citizens in general are not clean. When a considerable number of citizens are ready to encourage clean electoral practices, clean candidates will naturally appear.
One of the main reasons why electoral practices are largely unethical and violent in Nagaland is because of bogus entries in the electoral roll. All the electoral violence that happens in our land, particularly in the villages, is because of this. If there were only genuine entries in the electoral roll, then the chances of engaging in unethical and violent means would be drastically reduced. The violence and the money pumped in during elections are essentially for securing the bogus votes. It is indeed difficult to prove but it is also equally difficult to disprove that every village has bogus entries in the electoral roll. Unless this anomaly is checked, almost all of the efforts put forward towards clean elections will remain futile. It is necessary to clean the cobwebs but it is more important to get rid of the spider.
We all look forward to the day when elections will be healthy, clean and ethical. However, we will have to bolder and more action oriented if we want to get there sooner than later. It is not wrong to believe that everything that ails our society is rooted in the manner elections are held here. We have realized the crux of the problem. What needs to be done now is to face the problem head on and solve it.