Church and clean election
- Part 1 -

Z K Pahru Pou *

St. Joseph's Cathedral Church located at Mantripukhri, Imphal. Photo taken sometime in January 2011

1. Introduction:

Transparent, smooth and just governing system is prerequisite for progress, peace and all round development of any society. In a representative parliamentary democratic country, election becomes the cornerstone of setting up a strong viable and rejuvenating state.

Election should be understood as a time of choosing leaders who would not rule over us but who would sacrifice their time, energy and their resources for wellbeing of society. In other words, election is a time of affirmation of varied spiritual gifts endowed to individuals for the welfare and building up of community but which is never for personal gain (Romans 12:6-8, Ephesians 4:11, I Corinthians 12:1-10). Malpractices in election signal decay of moral and spiritual life of citizens - affecting the holistic development of our society.

In Manipur where Christians formed a sizable population majority in the state and where many politicians, bureaucrats and government officials are church members, it is impossible to establish a clean church if its congregation are corrupted. Unfortunately the Church failed to be a prophetic community as it seeks benefit from the present corrupted system. It may not be wrong to assume that only a clean Church will facilitate in clean election and clean election will lead to an establishment of a clean state.

Killings, kidnappings, division within families and churches, threats and intimidation and all types of immoral activities increase during election time. This challenges the Church to undertake its huge task of inaugurating of God's reign on earth. The task is so huge that it appears indomitable to accomplish but if the church is determined and persistent in its fight against evil forces nothing will be impossible.

2. What is Politics?

Politics comes from the Greek word polis which means city state. In ancient Greek, life revolves around city where people gather together, discuss and share their opinion about daily affairs. There is hardly any aspect of our being which is not affected by the good or bad shape of politics. It is a process by which a group of people make collective decisions and generally applied to the art or science of running government or state. Modern political discourse focuses on democracy and the relationship between people and politics.

It is thought of as the way we choose government officials and make decisions about public policy. Politics as science of government deal with the development and adoption of specific policies with a view to their being enshrine in the legislation. Political institutions are instituted for the welfare of the whole community and not for individual interest or personal gain.

The involvement of church in politics is unavoidable task. God through Moses actively took part in the liberation of the oppressed groups of people under Egyptian bondage (Exodus 3ff). After settlement in the Promised Land, God through Prophet Samuel choose King (I Samuel 9ff). God also send prophets to guide and correct the rulers when they go wrong (Amos 5:24, Micah 6:8). Jesus, like the prophets before him, points people to God who is the Lord of Heaven and earth, and he teaches them to pray that God's will may be done "on earth and it is in heaven."

Today, rulers tend to manipulate the entire governing system for their own benefit by neglecting the needs of many people and they have become anarchic than democratic. The value of the Kingdom of God is destroyed. A Christian has to be a responsible participant in democratic government to exert pressure for people who has political power to be responsible before a righteous God for the exercise of this power.

E.Clinton Gardner mentioned the following reasons why Protestants fail to exercise or neglect political responsibilities:
(a) they believe that politics is a dirty business,
(b) they do not understand political power,
(c), they fail to organize to influence government policy,
(d), they fear controversy,
(e), they fear compromise,
(f), they emphasise personalities and single issues, and
(g), they misunderstand the doctrine of the separation of Church and State.

Although the above points are discussed in the context of USA, they can be useful lesson for our church to learn and participate responsibly in establishing democratic government and bring transformation in society.

3. What is Election?

Election has become the only fully respectable method for selecting political leaders in the 20th century. It formed an integral part of politic. It is a formal decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold the public office. Elections are carried out through a wide variety of techniques. Votes are given to individuals, to collective entities or to institutional units. The voting may be secret, public or even recorded and published.

All that elections have in common is that they are a method of selecting one or more candidates for office from a wider field by aggregating the individual preferences and counting them. Fair and free election process is hence a prerequisite toward establishment of good government. It is one of the most important, urgent and vexed issue that needs to be addressed in our society. We cannot get complete desirable result at one go. The Church must struggle till it succeeds in installing a clean, transparent, accountable and responsible government.

4. Probable factors resulting to unfair election:

Some of the prominent factors that lead to unfair election which include economic, moral, spiritual, political and social issues are:

a. Compulsion to win: Many candidates adopt unfair means to win election by hook or by crook. They use money, muscle and gun power to get elected. Some candidates work hand-in-glove with underground cadres and gangsters. Many political parties give ticket to either criminals or rich people or their family members. This, sadly, concedes the "winnability" factor over "clean" politics.

Hence more and more people with money and muscle power are getting tickets from the political parties. Out of 543 MPs, 162 have criminal cases pending against them. And out of 4,807 MPs and MLAs, a whooping 1,460 have criminal records pending against them. Hence around 30 per cent of Indian lawmakers have a criminal record. This shows that candidates and political parties have little or no respect for the public to practice real democracy.

To be continued..