Source: Google photo
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The democracy is a beautiful word. All over the world,
people long for the freedom to choose their own government that will truly
represent them and serve their needs and fulfill their aspirations. There is
nothing better than an honest representative government that serves the people,
but we live in an imperfect world where the greed for power makes people
corrupt. They will do anything to win election that may include outright bribing
the voters to get their votes or intimidation and threat of physical violence
against those who do not vote for the corrupt politicians.
It is no secret that most politicians become immensely rich
when they get elected and start getting commission money from rich contracts
when the government buys what it needs to modernize the country. It may be the
massive infrastructure development or the purchase of military hardware from
abroad or other sources. The commission these middlemen and women make from
such deals runs into millions of dollars that make them super rich.
Often these corrupt politicians resort to outright
extortion of businesspeople and middle-income businessmen with the threat of
closing down their business unless they pay the so-called protection money.
This is just like the mafia people who forcibly take over the properties of
people who refuse to pay them the “protection money” or even kill them.
When they become super rich through corruption, they run
for the elected office to become ministers, members of the parliament or other
such posts. Some have become leaders of their country while people suffer. They
ultimately regret voting for the corrupt people and desire to vote for those
candidates who promise to bring in an honest government so that they can live
in a free democratic society where the government serves the people and not
rule over them with tyranny.
I have lived and worked in many countries where I have seen
first-hand the devastating effect of the corrupt governments on the people. We
all have heard of the dictator in Romania who built a 1000 room palace for
himself and bathed in a bathtub made of gold and we also know what happened to
him and his family when people could not tolerate it anymore.
In a totalitarian society where they have a one-man rule,
such abuse of power makes people poor and desperate for change, so they start to
protest on the streets or through strikes to shut down the factories or the
transportation system to paralyze the country but often pay a high price of
getting killed or jailed where they are very badly treated.
When poor people asked for bread from the Tsar of Russia,
he sent brutal police force to open fire on them outside his palace gate. It
led to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia that shot dead the entire family of
the Tsar.
Unfortunately, people who want a change in their government
in a peaceful manner can only cast their votes in favor of those who promise
better governance, reap the consequence of electing corrupt people who make all
sorts of promises but forget about them as soon as they get elected.
In fact, it is now very common for the politicians to make
fake promises to the voters before the election because they want to win an
election through any means. A win means a sure way to get rich quickly with no
accountability to the people who elected such a person.
So, a question arises here – why the politicians become so
corrupt? The answer lies in the cost of the election process. It takes a lot of
money to win an election. It takes money to make rallies during campaign, pay
for the cost of assembling a large audience, pay for their transport, often
their food and printing the campaign paraphernalia like the manifesto. It takes
a lot of money to advertise on TV and radio and it takes a lot of money to
charter planes or helicopters to fly to different parts of the country on a
short notice for the election campaign rallies.
So, the politicians belong to the political parties that
allot tickets to certain candidates who may have a chance to win election in a
certain state or region. The political party raises funds to support their
candidate and provides on the ground support through their cadres who do not
work for free so they must be paid, fed and transported that costs money.
One way they raise funds for their campaign is through the
businesspeople who make donations to their campaign but in many countries,
such donations are made secretly so that the donors are not exposed for their
support to a corrupt person. The donors in return demand huge benefits to their
business if their candidate wins who may give them huge government contracts to
provide certain services.
We all know about the lobbyists in the United States who
walk the corridors of power to influence the senators and the congressmen to
pass bills that favor their business. They actively try to prevent bills that
may hurt their business like the case of the tobacco tycoons who lobbied hard
to prevent bills that warned people of the danger of smoking. They failed and
are now compelled to print on the cigarette packets the warning that smoking
causes cancer, so it hurts their business.
Another way that is more popular with the politicians is
the extortion racket they operate to raise funds for their political campaigns.
All they have to do is to send their goons to extort money from the rich
people. It happens in many countries where such practices discourage the
businesspeople to set up business and re-invest money in new projects, so the
country suffers. The extortion is not limited to the rich businessmen. It hurts
the common people as well. If you set up a small store or build a house, they
come to extort money from you. They take commission from the suppliers of the
building materials who pass on the added cost to you.
But the most popular way the corrupt politicians make money
is through the widespread system of taking commission from any purchase the
government makes and from illegal mining, illegal logging, illegal cattle
smuggling, drug trafficking etc. They always find new ways of taking commission
to enrich themselves like taking huge bribes to give employment to unqualified
people for numerous government jobs.
They bribe the police, the border security forces, the
lawyers and even the judges to look the other way so that no one takes them to
a court of law. They maintain an army of goons who carry on such activities
freely who in return get a share of the loot. In case someone is caught and
brought to the court, the corrupt lawyers go to defend them and get them released.
This type of corruption filters down to the lowest level of
the society where a low-level constable starts to take extortion money from
truckers or motorists. Our tour bus in South India was stopped by a policeman
who would not let the bus pass unless the driver coughed up some money. The
tour operator was legitimate, the bus was legally registered, and the driver
made no traffic violation, but the policeman extorted money just the same
because he could. There is no accountability for such corrupt people.
I have written a blog on corruption that you should read
here called the bane of middlemen.)
The second blog you may like to read is an evil nexus in this context.
There is a third blog called the allure of black money that should also be read.
So, all over the world wherever they practice voting to
elect their government, people are demanding electoral reforms that should
include transparency in collecting legitimate campaign funding and in spending
the money for legitimate reasons.
The corrupt politicians who are not popular, find new ways
to suppress the voting rights of people who may not vote for such candidates
when threats and intimidation does not work. They can tamper with the voting
machines to get votes cast for someone else. They bus in flying voters or
illegitimate voters who are given fraudulent voter’s ID.
Many countries have tried and failed to make laws to make
meaningful electoral reforms because the law makers are corrupt, so they defeat
the bills that do not favor their corrupt practices. If a candidate only
campaigns using the free social media to reach the voters, the powerful TV
stations cannot make any money from the political advertisement. If the unpaid
volunteers who go door to door to campaign for a candidate who is honest, then
the paid field workers who work for the corrupt candidate will not like it and
may clash with the volunteers.
A
change is coming:
Now the Prime Minister of India Mr. Narendra Modi has
started the process of making the entire electoral process transparent that has
put the corrupt people in a bind. The voter’s list is purged of all the fake
voters, flying voters and non-citizens by linking their national ID with their
tax ID and their bank accounts. Those who have fake national ID are easily
caught and removed from the voter’s list throughout the country.
Every candidate fighting election anywhere in the country
must submit his or her tax returns for the last so many years, must declare his
assets and how he has acquired them, must show transparency in collecting
campaign funds and list of their donors and lastly must present the correct
accounting of all expenses to the Election Commission that oversees the election
process anywhere.
If a person is found to hoard black money or has properties
illegally acquired, he is summoned by the Enforcement Directorate for
questioning. ED has put many such people behind bars who are facing years of
jail term. Many politicians and businessmen are already in jail in India while
a number of them are on bail but may end up in jail in the future as more and
more evidence against them pile up through investigation by the crime branch
of the NBI and other such branches of the government.
Once found to be guilty of a crime, such people are banned
to take part in any future election and their properties and bank accounts are
frozen in favor of the government. Those who have fled the country to evade
prosecution are being sought through legal means to repatriate them so that
justice is served.
Those who are hiding their loot in foreign banks are now
being exposed and prosecuted. Their foreign accounts are frozen and their
properties in India seized and auctioned off to pay their victims. The chief
Minister of Uttar Pradesh state of India sends in the bulldozers to demolish
the illegal properties of the corrupt people no matter who they are and what
political position they hold. It has made him many mortal enemies, but it does
not dissuade him to make life very hard for the criminals.
There is an ongoing effort in India to bring about the judicial reform as well so that the guilty people are punished by the fast-track courts to send a strong message to the corrupt people. The long and slow judicial process that may take years to give a verdict needs to change.
Source: Google photo of illegal buildings being bulldozed in Uttar Pradesh, India
The electoral reforms that are currently being implemented
in India by Mr. Modi is a step in the right direction to bring in fundamental
changes in the whole process of election in the country that will make it easy for
the poor but honest people to fight an
election and win. Barack Obama proved that he could win an election and become
the President of the United States without the monetary support from the rich
businesspeople. Millions of people volunteered for free to campaign for him.
It is another story that Obama could not bring the
electoral reforms by enacting laws because such a move greatly inconvenienced
the corrupt people who want to maintain their corrupt practices to win
election.
But the electoral process reform is not impossible as Mr.
Modi is proving. You cannot change the whole system overnight, but many steps
can be taken to allow the honest people to participate in the governance of the
country. Only then you can have a government for the people, by the people and
of the people that will only serve the people and not rule over them.
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La biografía de anil en español.
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