HAPPY NEW YEAR 2008
The most critical challenges that humanity will face in 2008 is global climate change and religious issues.
The next year's presidential election also will not be free and fair, in the Maldives.
No worries! You will not have to vote for me in the next election...but!...
A CALL TO FAIRNESS
28 Jan 2007
Today people should know about the democracy in the 21st century is not a mere political formula, a system of government or social order. It is a search for the best way of all humankind, the most in keeping with nature of man and the universe. The fairness of the election process should be guaranteed in a manner that is transparent and accessible to the electorate, that is, all of us. This opportunity should be taken to remind you that there are threats to the fairness of election process.
The first among them is the advantage, and temptation, that being in government gives the ruling party.
This can never be eliminated, but it can be minimized: The whole election process, from the drawing of electoral boundaries and the registration of voters to the conduct of the campaign and the election itself should be supervised by an independent commission, whose membership should require the approval of all political parties.
Among the duties of such a body should be to regulate the access of parties to the publicly owned media during the campaign. The United Nations can provide such an independent review of electoral procedures, but the request for their supervision must come from the current government. Actions I feel they are loathe to take as they would be politically shooting themselves in the foot.
Political parties should not be formed for serving the interests of any particular entity or families, but with primary concern as is to promote national interests, to give political education so that a definite national interest is achieved.
Ministers should be required to surrender all policy making powers and ministerial privileges for the duration of the election campaign, other than those necessary to guarantee national sustainability.
The cardinal rule for free and fair elections is that the electoral process is not controlled or by any one party, in office or otherwise. This requirement should extend to timing, as well as the conduct, of elections. It might be added that all mature democracies have the power to suspend the democratic progress in times of war, but as we are living in a time of external peace, elections should proceed in like clockwork, in an uninfluenced fashion.
We must also make it a point that the usual exclusions operating in most democracies are children, criminals and aliens-(I mean foreign residents). This is a very mixed bag, and different reasons clearly apply for each category. The prohibiting of children below 18 or 19 or a decided age is justified both by commonsense and developmental psychology. This was years ago. Below a certain age most children did not have sufficient experience depending on the system experienced or sufficient sense due to lack of awareness of their parents or the society at large and of the longer term consequences of their choices to be treated non-paternalistically. But today even the 15year old is concerned about the issues and the system of government and their rights, because it is what we wanted. We wanted and want our children to be better groomed than us? Now we are in the 21st century!
As we all understand in this 21st century, in most societies there is a clustering of rights which children attain together and which define adulthood: the right to marry, to own a property, or to initiate legal proceedings in one's own person and also to vote. These, usually coincide around the age of eighteen (18), with the latest age for leaving secondary school and the obligation for military or police services.
Everyone has a right to have their share, and a form of government in which the ruling power of a state is legally vested, not in particular families or entities, but in the members of the community as a whole saying again, for the people, in which the governing body is comparatively a large fraction of the entire nation.
Political parties should not be formed for serving the interests of any particular entity or families, but with primary concern as is to promote national interests, to give political education so that a definite national interest is achieved.
If people are conditioned to authoritarianism etc. in the family or in Schools and if they have no experience of self-organization or co-determination in their work place or their neighbourhood and voluntary associations, they are unlikely to be active citizens or feel any responsibility for the condition of their society at large. The idea of a civil society indicates that democracy needs to have social association of all kinds that are organized independently of the state. Only in this way can power of the state be limited, can public opinion be articulated from below rather than managed from above, and can society achieve the self-confidence to resist arbitrary rule. Where the mankind learns the feeling of brotherhood, sympathy, fine conduct, manners ,co-operation and giving room decent associations, in which the community is given a definite and manageable form and organization to execute its will and authority though it maybe in the hands of the so called minority working for the rights of the people, that minority represents the people, elected by the people and is removable by the people, that has no right of its own, but exists for the majority, and is born of it, governs only, because it is backed and approved by the people, the majority though some call it the still the minority. Who is the minority?
Everyone has a right to have their share, and a form of government in which the ruling power of a state is legally vested, not in particular families or entities, but in the members of the community as a whole saying again, for the people, in which the governing body is comparatively a large fraction of the entire nation. Whatever the precise duration of the elected offices, however, it is important that the timing of an election should not rest with the government in power.
Thank you.