Are we being deceived or are we being taken for granted in the realm of so-called moral improvement or is an open challenge being hurled at the citizens in the election of a Speaker of the Meghalaya Assembly? Many questions are being raised by the sitting MLAs in the appointment of a tainted member of the House as its Speaker, and there is every justification for them to question the reckless and careless attitude of the Chief Minister in the appointment of the Speaker, because what a person is, is what he is and becoming someone else is something that does not happen unless it has already happened – to be precise, since the Speaker already has a tainted image unless that tainted image has been cleared through an investigation that establishes innocence or a rehabilitation process if guilty, the person essentially remains the same that he was.
This has always been the case in a multiplicity of persons – at least in the embryo of the person. In the present case the people have the right to bring the charge of moral turpitude against the Speaker to the foreground and so draw the former personality of the Speaker to the present situation because nothing has been done to rectify the wrong and that raises the possibility of the essence of the habit rising again and again in an altered situation. A person is what he is.
That someone has ceased to perform certain immoral actions for which he was charged is mere fate that renders itself free to various public and behavioral interpretations. It is seldom the case that the habit of the act has been broken or that the cause or the ultimate reason for it has been removed. There are the opinions of specialists on such matters and till the people have been assured otherwise they have every reason to bring the matter to the attention of the Chief Minister. There is a well known saying that arose in the case of Clark Oloffson the Swedish bank robber of the 1960s that, “he who is a criminal through fate and facility learns nothing, but learns more and more, and a long abstinence even acts as a tonic to his talent”.
For us the people to be sure, all that is of interest is precisely that the Speaker no longer performs the actions he was charged for and that even given the opportunity his conscience would sincerely and naturally desist him from its performance, and instead resort to wiser actions than to attempt the old regrettable one, which made the people to consider him as thus and thus sort of a person. In such cases, the Church, we being Christians, would normally believe in the expiatory power of punishment and then in the obliterating power of forgiveness, and if that has been resorted to we do not know, but both are deceptions of religious prejudice – punishment does not expiate and forgiveness does not extinguish, what is done is not undone. Even if the person forgets something that he did, it is certainly not evidence that what was done has ceased to exist, or has even ceased to remain in the minds of the people.
A deed produces its consequences, within the person and outside of the person, regardless of whether he has been “punished,” “expiated,” “forgiven” and “extinguished” and even regardless if the doer has been promoted by the Church to the level of a saint. There are those that claim that the Church has exonerated the Speaker of the wrong he had done and therefore whatever kind of bizarre ideal we may follow as Christians, we should not demand that he deserves any greater condemnation, because in doing so we would be taking from the Church its privileged character of pronouncing forgiveness, and indeed we must go no further on the matter. We need to distinguish ourselves and not raise our level to the order of the Church. However we do have the right to theorise, the right to philosophise one’s’ actions…even the Church’s. The church believes in metaphysical things to which it gives an arbitrary meaning, and what we’re dealing with is real, not arbitrary. The state of affairs prevailing in the State is a real issue and real issues need real solutions.
When we’re dealing with the affairs of the State or the affairs within the community by the State we take for granted that we’re dealing with upright elected individuals and not with a mutual obligation between two ordinary people. In dealing with politics and the roles that politics plays, danger and caution demand that we should be on our guard against deception because we are not only dealing with the appearance of things as they appear on the surface but actually dealing with what lies within and this is what politics is really all about, and so in the election of the Speaker of the House there is justification for the doubts and the fears we raise.
One must study people to see what their criterion is and we have come to learn some of the criterion of the Chief Minister from his actions in the past five years. What is expressed in the election of the Speaker is fit to raise our suspicion. We know that we can judge a person by the fruit of his actions similarly we can judge a political party by the fruit of its actions, and we have come to know what the National People’s Party, or a coalition headed by the NPP delivered in the past five years – a high degree of corruption and a low degree of development and a loss in our geographical area, and an upscale in State organised illegal trade in coal and minor minerals, and bad ethics in general all of which were stated by none other than the Minister i/c Home Affairs in the run up to elections.
It is because of what we have experienced and heard that now we rightfully must be more circumspect, more suspicious when anything is set in place by the very same leader of the coalition government. Is there anything we can do to allay the fears we possess? Yes there is, and this is where we must take a risk…a calculated one – a preposterous line of action that may cause you to fall off your chair if you are sitting in one, so brace yourself to your chair and read on.
The proposal I am putting up may raise some fundamental questions such as – How can we evaluate the outcome of a proposal and is it any worth? Does a proposal necessarily have to fall into a line of rule? Who benefits, and in relation to what? The answer to all these abstract questions is for the “life” of the people of the State, and in this particular case the life of the Khasis and the Jaintias; and if a clear definition of “life” is necessary let me make it clear…my idea of life is “power” because life is all about being in power of oneself and that is what democracy essentially intended for us.
This proposal is made from a careful evaluation; one that has a definite perspective – that of the preservation of the tribals of Meghalaya and in a larger context, the culture of the tribals in the entire North East and beyond. The first step in the chain of reactions that must follow if the Khasi and the Jaintia are to become powerful once again in Meghalaya is the withdrawal of the BJP from the coalition government…the BJP must join the Opposition; not as a coalition of the Opposition but just as simple opposition members – preposterous, but necessary. The two BJP members are essentially lightweights in the Conrad government, their value limited to the fact that they are members of the party running the Central government, from where we get our funds, and we must not forget that in government formation evaluation is made from a perspective, a larger one that expresses itself beyond a community – beyond the State…essentially to a perspective that involves the party in the Central or the National government, and Conrad knows that very well.
This is a natural phenomenon in politics, but sadly lacking in the political acumen of the Khasis and the Jaintias. Coming back to the plan, this arrangement of the two BJP MLAs being in the opposition will go on for some time within which other coalition partners of the ruling will find themselves uncomfortably placed not knowing whether they are being treated as dispensable extra baggage or partners and that will lead them to evaluate their position in the ruling as the BJP members will function as a genuine opposition within their capabilities, which I must add will not be much, but will be enough of an inspiration to arouse the voices of other opposition members, especially the VPP members who can make waves and dents using fire and fury to taunt and tantalise the ruling coalition members.
At this stage the people will then be called upon to play their part to get the regional parties to withdraw their support to the government and join the Opposition…this should not be too difficult. When the Opposition has gained in numbers, all the regional support to the coalition would by then have been lost and a new coalition would be in a position to stake its claim at forming the government, but this new ruling party shall not be a coalition. Every member will be required to join the BJP, not support the BJP in forming the new government…in short a BJP government to rule the State. The Chief Minister will be nominated from among the best and approved at the national level. This way the government will have the backing of the Central government and the hegemony of Assam over Meghalaya would be over, and funds for development would become easier to avail of, and above all such an arrangement would provide for ears at the Centre to tackle every issue that concerns us, both local and national – Common Sense.
