AIZAWL, Oct 27 � It won accolades as an �independent� election watchdog, but the Mizoram People Forum (MPF), a platform of churches and NGOs floated by the Mizoram Presbyterian Church (MPC) to ensure clean elections in 2008, has raised a debate in some sections, particularly after it signed a pre-2013 poll agreement with political parties last month outlining its clean-politics agenda.
The general secretary of the MPF Upa Lalramthanga, a church elder, agreed that there were some quarters who criticised them for meddling in political affairs, but as he told The Assam Tribune, �it is done for the greater good.�
�We want to steer the politics of the State into the right direction,� he affirmed when asked to reply to the opinion that the MPF is breaking the basic tenet of democracy which says that religion and State affairs should remain totally separate.
Asked whether it had made an assessment of the ruling party�s commitment to its 2008 manifesto, the MPF GS said, �They have done best among all the governments we have seen so far.�
But while they did well in getting projects implemented, it is the worst government in providing essentials to the public such as gas, rice, water, and bringing down the high prices,� he said.
As for fighting corruption, Lalramthanga gave the ruling government the hats off as the �government which has taken the most steps to uproot corruption.�
The MPF plans to start its local meetings across the State preparing the people for the coming Assembly elections, he said.
However, while lauding the MPF for helping to keep publicly ostentatious election related spending by parties and politicians under rein, it�s the principles of its agreement which is causing uneasiness in a section of people. The agreement has seven articles, of which the first three are harmlessly in line with the national code of election conduct. Some which demands that political parties and candidates hold all their public meetings under its aegis is giving politicians nightmares.
The MPF cannot shake off questions about the ethics of a church platform enforcing a political agreement instead of preaching and enforcing the morality of good conduct within its own walls to its members. Most politicians belong to the MPC, which has the largest membership in the State.
Significantly the second largest church here, the Baptist Church of Mizoram (BCM) did not join the MPF in 2008 because of its official belief in the basic principle of separation of religion and State. It has not joined the bandwagon so far. Though Lalramthanga, when asked about this said that some circles may join up as BCM has freed individuals to make up their own minds.
Muanpuia Punte, one of the advisors of the North East Students Organisation (NESO) criticised the MPF�s codes particularly the clauses which want politicians to refrain from making personal references to individual lives of rivals and stick to policy and programmes. The MPF also warns against what it calls �false propaganda, unproven truth and scandalous issues,� which are the grist of democratic debates.
�If people are not allowed to freely speak their mind, views and experiences about the candidates, how will we ever be able to assess them at all, all these dos and donts will not help the people because public have to know the truth about their politicians,� he said.
He is totally supported by M Lalmanzuala, founder of the Mizo Tangrual Pawl (MTP), another social watchdog organisation. Manzuala is a retired bureaucrat and a popular radical social thinker.
The MPF wants the political parties to nominate candidates who are (to quote from Section V), �stable and upright persons, honest and hardworking, person with great integrity, free from alcohol and drugs, who abstains from fornication, who greatly respects the law of the land, dedicated to welfare of society and fellow human beings, and committed to own faith and religion.�
Many youngsters felt that the MPF�s ideal candidate reads like an advertisement for a church pastor, falling far short of the qualities of a leader for the beleaguered and rapidly changing Mizo society which needs persons who have the stuff to lead the State into the 21st century. �We normally expect most people to be stable, honest, etc. We need more. We need highly educated and intellectually aware people who are conscious of the issues of our times, dynamic young and not old, who can communicate with the outside world and yet lead us to a Mizo future and not to be assimilated by others,� said a young college lecturer.
�Being honest and hardworking is not enough. A leader has to be something more, much more, we need leaders who are not hypocrites and who can speak their mind openly and frankly,� he said.
Alcohol is the sparky point as most of the politicians are not teetotalers despite it being a State under prohibition. �Yes, we know that, we have also been told that the Chief Minister, Pu Hawla himself takes a pre-dinner peg or two. But that is his personal life,� the MPF GS waved away the issue without a thought to the fact that hundreds of youth get arrested on the streets of the State for a drink like this.
Women are taken in by the �abstain from fornication clause�. Extra-martial affairs and �womenizing� is a rampant social vice as women�s groups here have been trumpeting. But since the MPF agreement warns against discussing personal lives of politicians, how are these issues ever going to make it to the public forum, they wanted to know.
Asked if the MPF would open a forum where the secret wives and peccadilloes of the politicians could be reported for action to be taken against them, the GS said he would take it up in the next MPF meeting. But he reinforced the MPF belief that public hate �adulterers� naming a well known politician who now dared not jump into State politics because he had a mistress in Delhi.