HVK Archives: Ray of hope : United Front did not get untied
Ray of hope : United Front did not get untied - The Asian Age
Seema Mustafa
()
12 April 1997
Title : Ray of hope : United Front did not get untied
Author : Seema Mustafa
Publication : The Asian Age
Date : April 12, 1997
Optimists look for silver linings. Even when the pessimists appear
to be right. Our political leaders have not had enough of the games
that have held the country to ransom for the last 12 days. At the
time of writing this, the government is fighting for survival in
the Lok Sabha while its worthwhile leaders, and those of the
Congress, are parleying outside to arrive at the elusive
"consensus."
It is difficult to make any predictions, impossible to speculate,
and hopeless to make sense out of a bizarre scenario. The
temptation to do so is tremendous but then like all soothsayers it
is wiser to speak after the event, than to put one's foot into a
political mouth that knows not what it is saying.
So one tries to look for the silver lining in the grey, dark
horizon. And ... voila... finds it. Almost like Congress president
Sitaram Kesri pulling out the rabbit from the hat, the card from up
his sleeve, the ace from the pack - there and not quite there. So
it is with the silver lining - almost there but not quite. Yet it
constitutes a glimmer of hope and let's face it, that is all
optimists in these rough and tough times can hope for.
The ray of hope emerging from the sordid drama of the last 12 days
is that coalition politics is coming slightly of age. In that the
United Front, a coalition of 13 political parties, has managed to
hold its own at least until the vote of confidence in Parliament.
The Congress president, Mr Sitaram Kesri, had only one card -
withdrawal of support to the government and he played it happily
without any assessment of the ground situation. It was not his
fault, He is a man of the Rajya Sabha whose political activity has
been restricted to the Prime Minister's office of yesteryears, the
AICC(I) headquarters and his own residence. Of course this is what
shrewd politics is made of these days. So in what he thought would
be the move, he threw his hat into the ring. In the hope that the
coalition would act according to past Precedent and splinter in its
over-eagerness to pick up the Kesri topi. He kept waiting for the
deluge. But there was complete silence. Deafening really and from
then on the gamble began to sour.
The Congress president did not take his party into confidence. That
has become the tradition to the Congress. The Congress Working
Committee endorsed the decision after Kesri had handed over his by
now infamous letter to the President. General secretaries of the
party and state chiefs reacted to the "bolt from the blue" by
rushing to Delhi. The party chief has still not called a formal
meeting to apprise his flock about why he did what he did, whether
he was working to a plan, how does he expect to gain from it, are
elections the best option for the Congress and is he a man of rare
intellect that is beyond ordinary human understanding.
The United Front, one cannot say at this stage as to how long it
will remain united, of 13 apparently disparate parties had acted
with more cohesiveness and a sense of responsibility. The
consolidation of the Front surprised its ardent supporters and
confounded its critics. It probably came as a surprise to the Front
partners themselves who responded positively to former Prime
Minister Mr V.P. Singh's initiative to ensure they united to face
the challenge posed by the Congress one fine Sunday. The past 10
days were dogged by all kinds of rumours, many of which found their
way into the newspapers: Mulayam is going to leave, Laloo has had
talks with Kesri, Moopanar is in favour of a Congress coalition,
Chandrababu has no intention of remaining in the Front.
The Front did not break with the result that the talks between it
and the Congress broke down. The government went into the House to
face the vote of confidence on Friday while efforts intensified in
the lobbies and corridors of Parliament to reach a solution. The
solution, it is too early to say whether it will fructify, hovered
around a change in leadership with the United Front government
being supported by the Congress. In
other words, back to the status quo without Gowda.
The United Front leadership had till the eve of the Parliament
session taken the position that they could not open the question of
leadership to blackmail as this would set an extremely unhealthy
precedent for coalition politics of the future. That it was not for
one party to decide, simply because of the weight of numbers, as to
who should be the leader of another party. The question was of
support on issues, it should not be converted into support for
personalities. There was tremendous pressure on the Untied Front to
sacrifice this position, throw out Gowda and retain the government
under a new leader acceptable to all concerned. The Front refused
maintaining that it could not succumb to political blackmail of
this kind. And that the Congress grievance was of not being
consulted, of being neglected and ignored which could be redressed
even with Mr Gowda in position as the Prime Minister.
If there is a change in this stance, and the United Front decides
after the vote of confidence to reach a compromise on the issue of
leadership, it will be jeopardising the future of coalition
politics without gaining more than a Very limited time-frame for
itself. A government that kow-tows to the kind of pressure exerted
by the Congress cannot hope to survive. It can last for a little
longer than today and when it falls in the next round, it will
splinter into irretrievable pieces.
It is true that no one wants an election. But Kesri's action has
set into motion events which have now gone beyond control. But
just the Front and the Congress fear of election and the BJP claim
to want one is no reason to put off what seems to have become the
inevitable. If not now, then a few weeks, months later. Today the
Front has a plank to campaign from. Tomorrow it might limp into a
poll with the advantage flowing totally to the communal forces,
against whom it claims to be uniting now. Obviously the nation
cannot afford an election. Given the unpredictable nature of the
electorate, no member of Parliament can face a general election
with any degree of equanimity. But this should have been thought
of, considered, accounted for by the political leadership of the
Kesri kind before it began throwing the pack of cards all around in
the hope that an ace would come turned face-up.
One can only hope that some lessons have been learnt. Those who
have successfully carved out a major role for regional parties
through an effective coalition structure will improve upon the
mechanism and work to lay out new guidelines that should govern a
government born out of coalescing partners. It cannot function
with the old set of one party rules, which is one of the main
reasons why it failed to generate support and iron out the
differences, howsoever trivial, that make the difference between
success and failure. The government has not come down because of a
break in the coalition, it has come down because of a supporting
partner outside the coalition. This is a fact that needs to be
highlighted as unlike 1977 when inner differences brought down the
government, the United Front (like the National Front in 1990) has
remained united. This is the silver lining one was so desperately
looking for. But then one can only hope that the coalition
partners do not lose sight of this fact, and indulge in political
convolutions that make a mockery of the politics of coalition which
should be the new reality and not the tool for manipulations and
blackmail.
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