Last few days have witnessed very interesting line of arguments being forwarded by eminent leaders who at one point of time we seen as the ray of hope in the traditional political sphere. Being a critic of the kind of politics they practice, it is not surprising for me to watch myself writing down this criticism of all the hue and cry around EVM and how they can be hacked.
For a naive public, a doubt is enough for them to question the fairness. If this is same public who has witnessed booth capturing, bogus voting, voter luring for good part of their life, a frivolous thought of a possibility of tempering doesn’t comes as a surprise to them. What is shocking here is, there losing politicians are holding press conference forwarding their point but also behaving as if they know it has been done because they have been doing it earlier.
My sole discontent with the entire episode is with the height of sheer stupidity based on which these politicians have been arguing their case. If you think that you are winning the election because Twitter said so, you should also start taking the shady ad banners on the internet as well because, internet says so. Advise to such parties, please drop this line of thought process before its puts an irreparable damage on your organization. Just like clicking on shady banner ads harms your computer.
Bringing this article relevant to the title, one will wonder why parties like AAP are more concern about Punjab where they fared well and not at all seems to be concerned about Goa where they failed to open even an account. By any logical sense, the voice of concern should have been louder for Goa rather than for Punjab. Simple answer here is Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT). Goa has been the only place where the entire election was done under VVPAT. Questioning Goa result will immediately call his bluff. It’s not that there was no usage of VVPAT in Punjab. As per a news Election Commission used 6,668 VVPAT in 33 assembly seats
(Read: http://www.firstpost.com/politics/punjab-election-2017-after-vvpat-snag-repolling-ordered-at-48-polling-stations-on-9-february-3270524.html). From here the story of convenient argument begins.
Firstly, choose a result where things cannot be verified and choose only that part of chosen state to question the process where verification is not possible. This probably is the oldest trick in the playbook of conspiracy theorists “question what can’t be verified”. This way your theory continues to hold water till your supporter stop supporting you as a result of exhaustion.
Another convenient argument is to call for sacrosanctity of media houses and their exit polls to forward your line of argument. It’s probably the first time in the lifetime of exit polls they have witnessed someone batting for them so hard. Exit polls have turned out to be wrong all the time, from Bihar to Delhi to TN and now UP & Punjab. There has hardly been an Exit Poll which gave a reliable picture ever. Only and effective way is to rely on actual results. But here too the plague of convenient argument seems to have made inroads.
In general, reporters are counted amongst intelligent people who have a capability to impact the society with their observation, opinion and analysis. Put this perception against the perception about the politico-admin system which has a reputation of being corrupt and fallible. As a result, you get a base of conspiracy theory. “How can a sanctum sanctorum can be questioned when pitted against institutionalized devil?” What people forget is, this is the system of the day and people questioning has been the beneficiary of the system. They fail to provide a convincing answer as to why this faulty system behaved in this manner where things cannot be verified and not otherwise. To this I heard most weird line of argument that people who are tempering should explain why they haven’t tempered the Delhi or Bihar elections.
Similar to the line of Exit poll argument, third convenient argument is “internal survey” reports. The very name of the survey questions the credibility of the report. Is he really suggesting that his party’s internal survey should be relied more than compared to actual results?
And lastly, be counter offensive, question the result before they question the leadership. It’s like question the rules of sport if you have failed before people start questioning your capabilities as sportsperson.
All this leads to a question, why exactly litigation happy party moving to court if they really think their arguments have any merit. Are they suggesting that they don’t trust, Election Commission and Supreme Court but they trust Media houses and internal survey reports? To any prudent person, these points should not have been entertained right from the very beginning itself.
I wonder if these people listen to themselves before opening their mouth in public. My heart weeps for people who support such politicians with their trust. They count on them to see beyond the obvious but people like such are not only breaching their trust but also cheating the public for their petty advancement.
