People, Parties and Power

CALL it 'electionitis' or 'electionics': when a democracy is forced to go in for two elections in 18 months, it is sick; when even the second election does not promise a stable government, it is very sick. The politicians blame each other for the sickness; they are determined to disown their collective responsibility. But, as Camus once put it, in a democracy everyone is guilty of what goes grievously wrong. If our democracy has come to a pass where it cannot elect a government that works or even lasts a fairly long time, all of us have to sit down and scratch our heads to discover what really has gone wrong, and how serious is the wrong that has happened and whether it can be righted in the normal process of democratic remedies of which election is only one.