Politics is the process by which people make decisions about how a society is governed. Politics is meant to be the quiet, dignified exercise of collective choice. It is where a people speak, not in noise or fear, but in the simple act of marking a ballot. In theory, it is an expression of trust. In practice, it has begun to resemble something else entirely.
What passes for electoral politics today often bears little resemblance to its purpose. The language of ideas has been replaced by the grammar of force. Violence shadows the process. Intimidation stands where persuasion should. In its darkest moments, even life itself is made collateral. This is not participation. This is submission dressed as choice.
Then comes the weight of money. Votes are sought not with conviction, but with cash, goods, and alcohol. The voter is no longer a citizen to be convinced, but a target to be secured, a commodity to be purchased. In such a marketplace, conscience is discounted, and the ballot becomes a receipt.
There are other, quieter distortions. Proxy votes cast in absent voices. Booths that fall not to voters but to those who can capture them. These are not mere irregularities. They are acts that hollow out the meaning of an election from within, leaving behind only the appearance of legitimacy.
Yet, perhaps the most telling sign of decay lies even before a single vote is cast. The voter list itself, the foundation of the entire exercise, is widely seen as inflated beyond reality. In some places, it is no longer a record of people, but a measure of ambition. Villages compete, not in participation, but in exaggeration. Numbers swell beyond the living. The fiction becomes common knowledge.
And still, it persists.
It persists because it is no longer hidden. It is shared, protected, and defended. To question it is to invite the anger of the whole community. To speak is to stand alone. There is no liberty to name any village, no space to dissent. Silence becomes not agreement, but necessity.
This is the quiet tragedy. Not merely that the system is flawed, but that the flaw has been absorbed into the system itself. When malpractice becomes practice, when distortion becomes routine, the line between right and wrong does not blur. It disappears.
What, then, remains of politics?
Certainly not the free expression of public will. Certainly not a fair contest of ideas. What remains is a ritual, repeated with precision, emptied of meaning. Ballots are cast, results are declared, and the appearance of democracy is maintained. But beneath it all lies a different reality, one shaped by coercion, inducement, and a collective acceptance of wrongdoing.
To restore meaning to this process is not merely an administrative task. It is a moral one. It requires more than rules. It requires the courage to question what has become normal, and the will to reclaim what has been quietly surrendered.
Until then, elections will continue, but politics, in its truest sense, will remain absent.
