HVK Archives: Watch Gujral in the run up to elections!
Watch Gujral in the run up to elections! - The Statesman
C R Irani
()
December 2, 1997
Title: Watch Gujral in the run up to elections!
Author: C R Irani
Publication: The Statesman
Date: December 2, 1997
Anyone watching the antics of Sitaram Kesri and Pranab
Mukherjee these last few days must be sick to the point of disgust.
Even Arjun Singh and Jitendra Prasada, Sonia Gandhi's foot
soldiers, have fallen silent. It was seven weeks ago that Prasada
fired the first salvo asking that the DMK be removed from
government on the basis of private knowledge of the Jain
Commission findings. These two worthies have been trying ever
since to deliver their party to Sonia Gandhi's indifferent care; no
wonder they were greeted with marked reluctance on the part of
the Congress president, the CWC and particularly the MPs
unwilling to surrender their seats for nothing because nothing was
what Sonia promised. Kesri was at his wits end when along came
his pal Inder Gujral ever ready to do the dirty on his own
colleagues if only Kesri and the Congress would look kindly upon
him. The letter he wrote to Kesri rejecting Congress demands was
forced out of him at gunpoint but he still managed to leave a
loophole for escape.
A debate would have been acutely embarrassing; the fact that
Congressmen had no time for Sonia's private agenda would have
been all too painfully evident. Thanks to the manoeuvres of Kesri
and Gujral, the debate was twice avoided after being twice
scheduled and the onus for dissolution sought to be passed to
Rashtrapati Bhavan instead of where it belonged, at the door of
10 Janpath. The ostensible reason for not forcing a debate was
that at the end of it a defeated Prime Minister could not
recommend dissolution. That even without the debate a
dissolution was not recommended gives the lie to this particular
Gujral-Kesri con trick. Gujral bailed out Kesri and there was not
one constituent of the United Front who saw it coming. They all,
including the Left, swallowed the bait.
Pranab Mukherjee dithered during these seven weeks, but only
long enough to get his bearings as to where his interests really
lay. He appeared to ask for dissolution in aid of Sonia's agenda,
then quickly recovered to get back on the fence, correcting his
posture to right angles. On television he even managed to sound
hurt that the United Front would not reciprocate the courtesy and
extend support to Congress in return for faithful support first to
Gowda and next to Gujral for 17 months. One surprise is that such
inanities do not stick in his throat, another is that he thinks he is
being clever whereas he only manages to sound inane and sick.
You murder the husband and wonder why the wife is not
absolutely thrilled to marry you!
It is important for Kesri and Gujral to know that they are not fooling
anyone. The Jain report was an excuse to make a bid for power.
It failed because no Congress MP wanted to risk his seat for the
greater glory of the family. To avoid making this all too evident,
Gujral resigned instead of insisting on a debate on the Jain report,
exposing its shortcomings and going out like a man. The effort to
reduce the farce to a struggle for principles is ludicrous. The only
ones to come out of the mess with their virtue intact are the BJP
who say they are not seeking defections but if a "realignment of
forces" takes place and the President invites them to try, they will
not shirk their responsibility. They have learnt from the mistakes in
UP. The Congress however, are like the proverbial schoolboy
well birched but none the wiser!
The country is moving inexorably towards dissolution and fresh
elections. Some safeguards are necessary, the most important
being to have Gujral as caretaker Prime Minister for as short a
time as possible. Look how he is already trying to help Kesri in the
foreign contributions matter until the Delhi High Court rapped the
government sharply on the- knuckles; he is shielding Laloo
Yadav and going after Dr U N Biswas, joint Director (East) of the
CBI - even after Laloo, held incommunicado in jail, was able
nevertheless to see the relevant politicos and extend support to
the Congress. On current form, the Prime Minister can be
assumed to be planning to release Ashok Jain of the Times of
India from the clutches of the Enforcement Directorate soon. Quite
simply the man is both without a sense of shame and a sense of
duty. Such men are dangerous!
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