The Rising People’s Party’s live debate challenge offered to parties in power, first to the NDPP and then to its partners in the UDA alliance including NPF and BJP, is an interesting development. It is not very likely that the parties in the ruling dispensation would accept the RPP’s challenge but the point here is not whether the voters would see, for the first time in Nagaland, a live debate between political parties. It is about the importance of political debates, especially as a part of the electoral process.
Countries from all regions of the world are increasingly trying to integrate candidate debates into their electoral processes. Behind this global trend is the conviction that debates benefit traditional and emerging democracies in many ways. These include helping voters make informed choices, focusing candidates on policy issues, reducing the potential for violence in countries emerging from conflict, and holding elected officials to their campaign promises. To date, according to the National Democratic Institute (NDI), debates have been staged in more than 87 nations and regions. NDI, founded 1983, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization working to support and strengthen democratic institutions worldwide through citizen participation, openness and accountability in government.
Giving the voters access to information through debates between rival political parties or candidates can significantly improve their knowledge and increase democratic participation. Owing to several reasons, including poor media penetration, political information can be difficult to access for the voters in places like Nagaland. As a result of inadequate political information, voters may vote for candidates with little knowledge of the candidates’ policy stances, qualifications, credibility or previous performance. Political debates can certainly improve democratic engagement, which is actually beneficial to the candidates and political parties, and at the same time increase government accountability. However, in a place like Nagaland, convincing political parties or candidates to participate in live political debates would be a major challenge. During the last assembly elections, there were reports of “common platform” being offered to intending candidates in various constituencies but they were nothing close to political debates. They were basically about candidates taking turns in delivering prepared speeches from the same platform to their respective supporters without actually engaging each other in a showdown.
The ongoing clean election campaign, spearheaded by the church, may consider incorporating political debates and broadcasting them through low-cost means which can play an important role in informing the voters of the candidates’ political stances and improving the voters’ political knowledge, consequently strengthening democracy. No, live political debate is not the magic formula to ensure clean elections but it sure can be an important part of the whole process.