Pronouncements made by politicians are strongly tied to their political interests. But since pronouncements also have an idea component to them, a debate on the issue is essential. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's proposal for a fixed term might appear controversial since stability as a plank is associated with the ruling party. Stability, however, is the agenda of the Bharatiya Janata Party today as it was for the Congress party when it was in power. And, as a matter of fact, stability is not such a bad thing in itself. Politics in the 1990s has witnessed perennial instability in this country. There were three general elections in a matter of four years between 1996 and 2000. In a majority of the states where you had multi-party systems, there were elections one year after another with spells of suspended animation. In fact this, ironically, has led in the case of Uttar Pradesh to an assembly overshooting its term of five years. Elections are, admittedly, a legitimate way of aggregating the electorate'spreferences in a democracy. But it is ridiculous to have one election after another without a clear mandate. All kinds of essential legislation gets hijacked by frequent deadlock, indeed the collapse of the system itself. Aside from the fact that elections are very expensive to hold, in the 1990s they had become so frequent that they had failed adequately to reflect the mandate. Indeed, an election fatigue seemed to have set in. An institutional corrective will go a long way in bringing about a new equilibrium in this situation of perennial instability. The `constructive vote of no confidence' is such a device. The opposition cannot dislodge the government of the day, unless it is in a position to provide an alternative government. It was designed by legal luminaries in Germany with the sole purpose to get rid of institutional instability emerging out of multi-party systems. This legal innovation has three implications: First, it avoids the pitfalls of the conventional negative vote of no confidence, leading to frequent polls each time a government loses confidence in the House while no other alternative government can be formed. Second, as a consequence, it leads to fixed terms for legislatures and Parliament, although not for the government of the day. Third, and perhaps most important, it avoids deadlocks and suspended animation of assemblies, in short, a situation of no government. It is perhaps with this in mind that Prime Minister Vajpayee proposed fixed terms for the Parliament and the state legislatures during the golden jubilee celebrations of the Election Commission, although he did not argue out in any detail the functional relevance of the constructive vote of no confidence. The Congress president Sonia Gandhi, while opposing what she termed as "attempts to tinker with the Constitution" merely reflected a sentiment, and perhaps a partisan interest, yet failed to make a persuasive argument against the proposals in terms of ideas. The only worthwhile objection against the proposal is the assumption that somehow by going back to the people again and again, no matter how many times, one is somehow being true to the electorate's choices. Well, that can be better addressed by democratic innovations such as initiatives and referendums.
