If you think Trudeau was a bad choice or Sheerer will be or Kenney is or Notley was, you ain’t seen nothing yet! Just this month India completed its national election. Over 900 million people voted for 539 government seats over a period of almost six weeks. The results are now in and some of the accompanying data will shock you. In the world’s largest democracy, 43% or 233 out of 539 winning candidates in the general elections have declared criminal charges pending, according to a report by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR). Is there something wrong with this picture?
Indian law bars a person convicted of any offence and sentenced to an imprisonment of two years or more from running in an election. But persons only facing charges are free to contest the elections. Meanwhile, the Indian judicial system moves slowly and can take decades to resolve a case, so the potential convicted felons are not overly concerned. Out of the 7,928 candidates analyzed by ADR in this election, 1,500 (19%) had declared open criminal cases against them
Moreover, 159 (29%) of the winners face serious criminal charges including rape, murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping and crimes against women. The party which won the elections with a majority, can also boast the highest number of parliamentarians facing criminal charges. As many as 116 out of the ruling parties 303 elected MPs (39%) have criminal cases pending against them.
One winning candidate topped the list with 204 criminal cases against him, including cases related to committing culpable homicide, house trespass, robbery and criminal intimidation. Another elected parliamentarian is currently being tried for alleged terrorism. 30 other winners face charges of attempted murder, 19 are implicated in crimes against women and 29 for hate speeches.
I don’t know about you but that information just blew my mind! Over forty percent of the elected government officials could become convicted felons! What kind of a government is that? The inmates are running the asylum! Or more correctly, the crooks are running the country! It totally boggles my mind. I am assuming that these pending criminal charges were known during the campaigning and before the election.
What the hell was the Indian electorate thinking? How could so many unsavoury candidates run for office, let alone be elected? I can only surmise that mega-money was flowing out into the countryside, as it does in rural Turkey, in order to buy votes. Any admiration that I might have had for Indian democracy has just been placed in the same cesspool that stores all of the tweets and pronouncements of the self proclaimed “stable genius” of American politics!
Can you believe it?
What did you say? The crooks are running the country? Were you still writing about India? Or any other country?
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