The story of an honest politician

Jadu is an innocent school teacher—very honest but politically aware. He manages his household with his modest salary. However, the people in his area want him to become an MP, participate in policymaking, and contribute to lawmaking. Jadu has the willingness to run for election, but he lacks the minimum required funds. Some well-wishers managed to raise and arrange five lakh (500,000) takas for him. According to the Election Commission’s law, no candidate can spend more than ten lakh (1,000,000) takas in an election. With this support, Jadu started his campaign.

Madhu, on the other hand, is a strong candidate from a political party. He frequently holds massive rallies with ten to twenty thousand people, almost every day, as a show of strength. He has no shortage of money. On top of that, considering him the probable winner, corrupt businessmen in the area started supplying him with even more money—millions of takas. They also set up various campaign offices to promote Madhu. Altogether, Madhu spent two crore (20 million) takas—one crore from his own funds and another crore from his well-wishers.

In the election, 70% of the people enthusiastically cast their votes. Madhu won by a huge margin and was elected as an MP.

As per the Election Commission’s regulations, both Jadu and Madhu were required to submit their election expenditure vouchers. Jadu submitted an account of five lakh takas, while the victorious Madhu submitted an account of ten lakh takas.

Questions:

1. Was this election fair and transparent? Did it truly reflect the will of the people?

2. Was a level playing field established in the election?

3. Upon an independent audit of the election expenditure vouchers, it was found that Madhu had submitted fraudulent records. Given the Election Commission’s investigation, does it have the authority to annul Madhu’s MP position?

If the answer is negative, then what is the point of this so-called election process? Many people often analyze elections by stating that a particular party has a fixed 30% vote share while another has a fixed 40% vote share. If that is the case, wouldn’t it be simpler to allocate MP positions proportionally among the parties instead of conducting elections?

Ultimately, resolving these questions before the election itself is what is called “reform.” Conducting an election while keeping the existing system unchanged only leads to another fraudulent election.