The primary requisite of government of a country is that it should wish and work for the well being of its people effectively. To meet the requirement of looking after people, leaders in the government need not be purely elected by the people. It is enough if the government is good irrespective of how it is formed.
If the leaders are elected by the people directly, it requires that people of the country and constitution should be wise enough and the procedure of election should be good enough to elect good leaders. If people are not wise enough or if the procedure of election does not concentrate on the key requirements, government will definitely fail to be good. Obviously, the present democracies are not good enough. So, the current election procedures are not proper and to some extent people are not wise enough to elect the right people as leaders.
How intelligent, observing and knowledgeable is a key person in the government decides how good is his personality and how efficient and good is he at ruling (A vehicle has to be driven by a qualified person for the safety of passengers). The conventional democracy does not check for the above qualities in the political leaders. This is how the conventional democracy is failing to be good.
One of the best ways to select an appropriate person as a leader is explained below.
Selection process:
1. For nominating in elections, the candidates must meet the requirements in intelligence, observation, aptitude, assertiveness, honesty, knowledge, wishing the well being of the country and enough physical health. Nationwide competitive test for the job of a politician has to be conducted for checking the above qualities through examinations.
2. Only people qualified in the above examination will be eligible to nominate in the elections. Election of the leader from nominees by the voters sufficiently ensures that a nominee does not try to exploit the initial exam process (if it is the only process to select a leader) for his selfishness and it makes all the people be listened to by the nominees. It also ensures that a nominee who deceives (if) in the initial exam has to pass through the election process. So, the procedure till here ensures well suited nominees for leadership. But, some of the voters may not intend to elect the best person out of the nominees due to natural unavailability of complete information about the nominees and/or lack of wisdom to identify the right nominees and/or selfishness. Also, the nominees may try to exploit these drawbacks to attract the votes of different classes of people with undue promises or they may inevitably make undue promises.
3. The voting has to be in two tiers to ensure that the right person is selected as the leader. 30% of the weight has to be given to tier 1 of voting process and the remaining 70% weight to the tier 2. In the tier 1 voting, a sufficient number of intellectuals from premier educational institutions, individuals and organizations with intelligent people have to vote because they will be relatively better in identifying and choosing the right people for leadership with less self bias than the common people (Intelligent people have better character and better decision making abilities than common people due to their better observation and thinking. However, the available limited intelligence does not guarantee perfection in character and decision making always. Also, the class of voters in tier 1 may not be sufficiently aware of the common people and their needs. So, keeping the tier 1 voting weight above 30 % means over acceptance of the tier 1 election by making the overall election tier 1 critical. Also, more than 30% weight to tier 1 election puts it to more risk of being hijacked by the politicians). The number of voters in tier 1 has to be large enough not to be threatened or attracted with offers by the political parties; or it should be well guarded. In tier 2, all the general public voters have to vote. Tier 2 voting lets overcoming of glitches in the tier1 voting and makes public be listened to sufficiently by the nominees. The leader has to be finalized by accumulating the results of both the tiers of voting.
Important notes:
· Tests for intelligence and/or knowledge of nominees cannot be ignored. An intelligent politician has better knowledge and decision making skills than a more experienced but less intelligent politician. Intelligence and knowledge implies character also. The available IQ tests do not reveal the IQ or personality of people precisely, but they can be taken in to account together with other written tests, interviews and candidates history. Experience with intelligence is a better qualification for a nominee.
· Equal voting status to all people as in the traditional voting means that wise people have to suffer for the equal status given to inferiorly decision making voters. Also, inferiorly decision making voters too suffer because of their own bad decisions in election. Bad decisions matter as good as good decisions. So, equal voting status to people does not support a very good government election. However, division of the weights percentage among the two tiers of election; deciding the percentage of the total voters to be in tier 1 election needs sufficient research. The above mentioned weights percents 30 and 70 are according to the author’s limited study and for guidance only.
· People have tendency to miss-understand that examinations take away the opportunity of an individual to be a political leader. Actually, examinations give opportunities to every appropriate person to be a political leader, where as the current democratic system is ruled by a few people. It is only a myth that current democracies give opportunity to every citizen to be a political leader. It is least practical, because the design of the current system allows a few established people to continue and does not give any extra support to a more appropriate person.
· It is people who want government for themselves. People get affected by every government action. It is not appropriate and sustainable to forcefully give a government to people that they do not want. So, any policy or process related to government should be implemented as per the like of people (majority of the people, where all the people can exist under a same government) irrespective of whether it is good or bad for them. This article is only an informative guide to possible government making. Practically many people may not like the two tier voting process as they may want equal status in voting. The existing single tier public election process may have to be taken for granted. This is not too worse to people than the two tier voting process.
Other requirements for a good government:
1. An expert advisory department can guide or help the government in deciding proper policies or orders.
Before elections, the same department can put the challenges in the country/state/unit and the solutions before voters and election candidates for their reference. This helps both voters and election candidates in decision making.
2. Just good leaders are not enough to have a good administration of the country. The administrative system should be very fine. A fine tuned administrative system needs sufficient research; and since the administration is a very huge system which changes continuously, the research needs continuation through the expert advisory department. New policies/ideas/enforcements can be tested through pilot implementations if needed.
3. A transparent system of people appointed through examinations and background checks with autonomy to monitor, verify the legality of all due political governance activities and report any non conformance to the legal system is essential.
4. All due political governance activities have to be transparent by publicizing the governance activities routinely through media or by giving the information to any citizen on request.
5. Voters should have right to vote for rejection of all the election nominees alongside being able to vote to one of the nominees. In case where majority of the voters choose not to elect any of the nominees in a constituency, a re-election should be conducted after some interval of time and that political constituency can be under the governance of higher level political authority until the re-election.
6. Voters are carried by election advertisements and speeches. A good candidate with low spending in election may not be received well by people and a less worth candidate may be able to attract people. Even to just introduce themselves to people some money is needed. So, here money also becomes one of the eligibility criteria to compete in elections, which is not desirable. A candidate should not need to be competitive to spend money to win in elections. The responsibility of introducing a candidate to people with sufficient communication on his policies and qualities lies with the elections conducting authority. No private expenditure should be allowed for candidates’ introduction to people. This makes sure that all the eligible candidates are introduced to voters equally. Any eligible candidate will be able to compete in elections not restricted by his money spending ability. Also, voters have to be educated to not get attracted to attracting advertisements, but analyze facts about candidates.
7. Many voters have tendency to choose their best out of only the candidates who are predicted to get large portion of the votes. But, voting is meant to choose the best person, not the best out of who may win. Voting is less meaningful if voters are not voting to whom they like actually. Awareness has to be created among voters that they have to vote to whom they like irrespective of whether the candidate is going to win or not.
8. Some of the current generation candidates competing in elections think that their policies should be projected to people as completely different from other’s policies to get recognized, and then they try to convince voters that their policies are the best. Candidates have to keep in mind that it is not bad to have same policies and philosophies as the opposition. They may explain to the voters that they can execute the same policies more efficiently than others, if they can really.
