KEEP IT OUT OF PURVIEW: This refers to Mr Hari Jaisingh’s article. The main objection of the politicians is that the Returning Officer, being ill-equipped to verify the correctness of the affidavits of the candidates regarding their assets and liabilities and criminal antecedents, should not be vested with the power to reject the nomination papers. Here is a suggestion. The candidates should declare their assets and liabilities and their criminal antecedents at the time of filing their nominations so that the information is available for use by the rival candidates and the electorate during the election campaign. The question of its verification be kept out of the purview of the Returning Officer which could be decided upon in due course by a competent court of law through an election petition.

If political parties are really sincere, they should have no objection to the suggestion and readily agree to incorporate the same in the Ordinance at the time of its legislation in Parliament.

Wg-Cdr C.L. SEHGAL (retd), Jalandhar

SELF-SERVING LEADERS: The Tribune Editor has quite aptly summed up the mindset of our present-day politicians when he says, “... the sane voices invariably fall on the deaf ears of the power-wielders.” Criminalisation of politics has made the system of patronage and self-aggrandisement so strong and deep-rooted that they now bother not whether such saner voices (observations, suggestions and instructions) come from the President, the Supreme Court or from the generally silent masses — their so-called electors.

It is no secret that every political party and the majority of politicians thrive on mafia support in their unscrupulous loot of the public exchequer and taming of their vote banks. In their mad race for power crumbs and comforts, critical national issues and burning regional problems form no priority for these worthy servants of the people.

The life of deprivation that almost half of our population is forced to live, and their crying woes constitute no agenda of these self-serving leaders hiding their heart and mind behind their ‘spotless white attire’.

But the issue is whether the nation should allow such self-serving and self-eulogising leaders to form a ‘unanimity of convenience’ and ignore the Supreme Court’s instructions and even reject the President’s suggestion of eliminating criminals from politics and heralding a political climate of honesty and fearlessness. But it would also be living in a fool’s paradise to hope that a murderer would pass a judgement of self-conviction and sign his own death sentence.

The only solution to cleansing the politics of the corrupt and the criminal lies in awakening the masses through media and education. Let our people learn that a democracy of the illiterate and unawakened masses is either an autocracy of the elected few or it is an anarchy which we might perhaps be heading towards.