Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: Free Press Journal
Date: July 29, 2008
If ethics, morality, propriety and ordinary
decencies are kept aside, the Trust vote victory last Tuesday evening was
one of the most successful operations ever mounted by the Congress and its
UPA allies, with a little help from intelligence agencies. In converting a
10 MP deficit into a 19-vote majority, the Manmohan Singh Government showed
managerial skills of a high order. Had a fraction of this energy, out-of-the-box
thinking and single-mindedness been employed in governance and the fight against
terrorism, India would unquestionably have been a much better and safer place
to live in.
For the UPA Government, it was tragic that
the huge political dividends that should have accrued from this successful
operation were checked by one act of counter-audacity by a beleaguered Opposition.
The dramatic protest by three BJP members flaunting the wads of Rs 1,000 notes,
allegedly paid to them as bribes by UPA managers, shocked the country. This
is not because the three MPs were suggesting something bizarre but because
they were confirming what was widely suspected to be happening in Lutyens'
Delhi.
For 72 hours prior to the vote, the Government's
spin doctors went into overdrive with feeds to ever-obliging TV channels that
all the Opposition parties (barring the Communists) would be affected by defections
and abstentions.
TV channels competed among themselves for
dramatic sourcebased stories of a crumbling Opposition. Last Sunday night,
for example, it was suggested by channels that both H.D. Deve Gowda and Ajit
Singh were going to turn turtle again and vote for the UPA; that some six
Biju Janata Dal were going to either abstain or vote for the Government; and
that three Shiv Sena MPs had made up their minds to switch sides. In hindsight,
this psychological warfare which combined triumphalism with disinformation
may come to haunt the UPA for a long time. It certainly created the atmosphere
for the last-minute BJP protest on the floor of the House to be taken seriously.
Additionally, it had the unintended effect of covering the Indo-US nuclear
agreement with moral disrepute. That the Government was caught totally unawares
by the flaunting of currency notes in the Lok Sabha was pretty obvious. The
reason was that by the afternoon of Tuesday (just four to five hours before
the actual voting) the UPA leadership had been informed by its friends in
the corporate world that a BJP-inspired sting operation to implicate the Samajwadi
Party leadership in the purchase of MPs had been foiled.
The information was not entirely incorrect.
Apparently on Monday afternoon, a BJP member from Madhya Pradesh was approached
with the suggestion that he help out the UPA. He contacted a BJP functionary
who then thought of the bright idea of entrapping the UPA. The BJP itself
certainly had the wherewithal to record phone conversations and even use a
hidden camera. However, it was thought that any sensational story backed by
film and audio evidence was likely to enjoy more credibility if it had the
certificate of a reputed media organisation. A media house was sounded out
and the approval of its editor secured.
Between midnight on Monday when a SP leader
visited the BJP members and 10.30 am on Tuesday when the "advance"
was paid by the secretary of a flamboyant leader, the conversations and transactions
were electronically captured. The BJP expected that the sting would be first
telecast on Tuesday afternoon.
By 3 pm on Tuesday, it became evident to the
BJP that its socalled media partner had absolutely no intention of either
telecasting the sting or handing over the raw footage to the party.
The possible reasons for its abrupt U-turn-profound
respect for the sanctity of parliamentary democracy, a desire to not appear
as a friend of the BJP, its shareholding pattern or belief that the nuclear
agreement was good for India-is a matter of conjecture. Whatever the real
reason, the relevant people in the UPA and its friendly agencies were aware
that a potentially damaging, last-minute crisis had been narrowly averted
thanks to the good sense of those who had faith in a "free vote"
in Parliament. The conduct of the media house is certain to become the subject
matter of a wider debate on journalistic ethics in the weeks to come. However,
for the BJP, the realisation that it had been "double-crossed" was
a bitter blow. It is not that the party believed that a single sting telecast
would alter voting patterns and neutralise the UPA growing advantage in the
numbers game. Having been completely outwitted and outmanoeuvred in the battle
to remove the UPA Government, the party wanted to end the campaign on a moral
high. The refusal of its media partner to keep its side of the bargain jeopardised
its damage limitation plans. After frenetic negotiations, the media partner
agreed to send a copy of the electronic evidence to the Speaker of the Lok
Sabha for his consideration. It is a different matter that the tapes finally
reached Parliament House nearly 24 hours after the Trust vote thereby exposing
the media channel to possible charges of additional subterfuge.
It was at this juncture that some BJP leaders,
including, by his own admission, L.K. Advani, took the decision to let the
three MPs lay the evidence before the whole Lok Sabha and, by implication,
the whole country. That their dramatic gesture was novel and didn't correspond
to the exacting standards set by Westminster is unde niable. Yet, in the light
of suggestions by the UPA that this was a pre-planned gimmick concocted by
the BJP to subvert parliamentary democracy, it is important to note that the
protest was an act of desperation by an Opposition that proved unable to resist
the UPA's no-holds-barred determination to win the vote.
Like the unedifying picture of Bangaru Laxman
accepting money across the table, the image of currency notes being flaunted
in Lok Sabha will be etched in the public memory for a long time. It has certainly
become the defining image of the Trust vote and, by implication, the Indo-US
nuclear deal. It is too early to say if this "cash for votes" scandal
contributes to further cynicism or translates into a quiet disgust with the
UPA. All that can be said with certainty is that the impression that some
22 MPs changed sides on non-political considerations may come to haunt the
Prime Minister. Yet, the BJP cannot but express its complete indebtedness
to the three MPs who refused to sell their soul to the highest bidder. It
is worth speculating what would have happened if the cash transactions had
remained in the realms of subterranean whispers and the UPA had won with a
19vote majority. First, Manmohan Singh would have emerged politically much
stronger-as P.V. Narasimha Rao did after defeating the 1993 no-confidence
vote in broadly similar circumstances.
The defectors would have been packaged as
those who voted according to their conscience.
Secondly, the Samajwadi Party would have been
even more uninhibited in projecting themselves as the single-window policy
clearance agency.
At present the party leaders are under some
tension. Finally, the Government would have claimed the scalp of the Leader
of Opposition. The stage had been set for the defections to be accompanied
by charges within the BJP that Advani had lost the moral authority to be the
NDA's shadow Prime Minister.
A revival of internal dissidence would have
created chaos and demoralisation in the main Opposition party in the run-up
to the general election. The Government thought big, planned big and almost
succeeded. The whistleblowers were the spoilers.
