SWATANTRA—AUGUST 15,
1947
TWELVE of the 32 Presidents of the United States were elected
to that high office without a majority of the popular vote. This could happen
because, in most of the States, the people do not have a chance to vote
directly for the President. They vote for electors who in their turn are
pledged to vote for the candidate of the party to which they belong. William
Langer, one of the Senators, has now introduced in the Senate an amendment to
remove the outworn machinery of the electoral college and to provide for the
election of the President by a direct vote of the people.
* * *
Describing the electoral college
as a relic of the stage-coach era when there were no facilities for rapid
communication, Langer says, “I want to make absolutely certain that the man
sworn into the Presidency of the United States is the man that the majority of
the people want.” One other very important change advocated by him is that the
job of nominating candidates for the Presidency should be “taken out of the hands
of the politicians and placed where it belongs—squarely on the shoulders of the
American people.” The selection of the highest executive officers of the State,
he argues, should be taken “out of the atmosphere of smoke-filled backrooms and
political horse-trading.” He appeals to the people of the United States “to
rise up in their might” and demand the abolition of the electoral college ; to
insist upon their fundamental right to nominate and elect the President by a
direct popular vote. He assures them, “The people can have that right if they
want it, and as soon as they want it. But they will never get it if they wait
for the politicians to give it to them on a silver platter.”
This worn-out mechanism of
electoral college, this relic of a bygone stagecoach era, which they are now
attempting to get rid of in America, is just what the framers of our constitution
here in India have chosen to borrow from the American constitution. This is a
great pity. Before the discredited electoral college system gets established permanently as
an integral part of the constitution, public opinion should be roused to the
need of preventing it and act promptly to prevent it. In a democracy people
have no rights other than the over-riding right to appoint their own Government.
If they lose that right, they lose all. They have to protect it against the
professional people wanting office, seeking it with a hunter’s instinct,
looking up on Government as their trade and drawing the line at nothing in the
effort to get power and hold power.
* * *
Not only the electoral college
system, but every device that conduces to the defilement of political democracy
with trickery and chicanery should be resisted. One such device in Madras is
worth noting as a revealing exhibition of the character of the present
leadership. One of the first acts of Omandur’s regime was the introduction of a
rule precluding any change of leader except with a two-third’s majority in the
party. The rule makes nonsense of the High Command’s argument in connection
with the dethronement of Prakasam—“He had lost the confidence of the majority
of members in the party, so what could we do about it?” If the rule had
preceded the crisis, the ex-Premier could not have been dislodged at all. The
present position is that with only one vote more than one-third, Omandur can
successfully defy any attempt on the part of the rest of the legislators to
oust him. The rule is a fraud on democracy.—(August 15, 1947) S A K A.
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