HVK Archives: Front unlikely to project Gujral as coalition leader
Front unlikely to project Gujral as coalition leader - The Economic Times
Political Bureau
()
December 6, 1997
Title: Front unlikely to project Gujral as coalition leader
Author: Political Bureau
Publication: The Economic Times
Date: December 6, 1997
The United Front leadership today made it more than clear that
there were few among them willing to patronise Prime Minister I K
Gujral's claim to leading the coalition in the impending mid-term
election.
This, notwithstanding the fact that the Front hopes to grind up its
'achievements' on the political and economic front, under the
leadership of Mr Gujral, as a poll plank in the coming election.
(During his stint in the Centre, though, the Left parties were the
most vocal critics of Mr Gujral's failure to deliver on commitments
made in the Common Minimum Programmee (CMP) of the coalition.) Indications of
this came from varied quarters m the
Front today. On the one hand, former prime minister and Front
chairman H D Deve Gowda flatly ruled out, from Mysore, any
need for the coalition to project a PM in the election. On the other,
Samajwadi Party chief and one-time prime ministerial aspirant
Mulayam Singh Yadav also hinted clearly in the capital that the
question of who would fill the prime ministerial slot, should the
verdict in the next election necessitated the Front to choose this,
would only be decided during the course of the poll, or, more
probably, after the completion of the exercise.
"It is not necessary for the Front to go to the polls projecting any
particular leader," Mr Gowda is reported to have said in Mysore.
He also maintained that each of the Front constituents, rather than
contesting the polls as one political entity, would contest retaining
their separate identities. However, they would present a common
programme, he held, hinting that the sensitive leadership question
would be settled, in the event of yet another hung verdict, on the
strength and power of each party.
Mr Gowda's statement is considered particularly significant since
it was the hardliners on the DMK issue within the Front, such as the
Janata Dal leadership, who had mooted the proposal that the
coalition pave the ground to one, embarrass the Congress
decisively through a discussion of the Jain report in Parliament
and two, start projecting Mr Gujral as the able chief executive
unjustly 'wronged' by the Congress. This, it was felt, would help the
Front to project Mr Gujral as the 'martyred' PM in the ensuring
mid-term poll.
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