The
Gandhis Must Vacate For An Opposition To Take Shape
Saeed Naqvi
After the vigorous opening speech in the
Lok Sabha by Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, Sonia Gandhi’s rump of a party
looked even more battered and bruised.
The most reassuring news for them since
the May 16 election results is spread across three columns of Time of India:
Gandhis will personally probe the poll defeat. In other words the regular
system of the famous A.K. Antony committees to investigate Congress defeats is
being discarded.
Antony, an acute Gandhi loyalist, never
in the course of his numerous probes, turned the search lights on his political
masters. But this time he may be left with no room for maneuver. The Gandhis
will be on the dissection table. Reports of irreversible poor health may be
leaked. What better way to stop the leak than sink the very idea of the Antony
Committee.
That the mother and son team have
undertaken to probe the party’s rout implies that their leadership was not
flawed, that the fault for the debacle lies elsewhere. The decision also
implies that atleast the Gandhis believe there still is a party under their
leadership, intact.
Senior leaders have been charting their
own course. As soon as Commerce Minister Anand Sharma sensed rout, he obtained
from Sonia the permission to represent the Congress at President Zuma’s
inauguration in South Africa. Earlier Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid requested
the Egyptians to let him see Luxor as India’s Minister for External Affairs.
Shashi Tharoor, with eye always on the
main chance, began to publicly wish Narendra Modi were his leader, inviting a
rebuke from Mani Shankar Aiyar who went on to say on TV that “Rahul should be
allowed to do the good work he is doing”.
The greatest security for the Gandhis,
one which will keep them on their perch, is that there is no life left in the
rump to ask questions. Those who could have asked questions, like Jyotiraditya
Madhavrao Scindia, have been kept outside the paddock. The simple principle of
dynasties is: the crown prince must not have a challenger. The queen must never
be upstaged. Even for the job of the President of India she could only settle
for the lackluster Pratibha Patil.
The truth is that the make-belief
shrouding the last days of the Gandhis cannot last very much longer. Their saga
is not likely to end in tragedy. Tragedies require a quality of heroism which
is missing here. Their’s is shaping up to a pathetic end. Are they really
waiting for another rout in the state elections?
It is very easy for Sonia Gandhi to
blame the spectacular defeat on scams, the party’s inability to communicate,
unmotivated cadres, debilitating bipolarity at the top, unidentifiable
leadership, a formidable list. Will she ever admit to herself that she was
badly advised by a concentric circle of advisers who did not have their fingers
on the pulse?
It will be an act of great courage to
face the unbelievably harsh truth. Never has a political family been so
universally hated, despised, loathed. This was part of the energy which became
a wave for Modi.
Sonia Gandhi must reflect (the young man
seems incapable of any reflection) how adoration in 2004, when she refused the
Prime Ministership, turned to such undiluted disgust by 2014.
From the very beginning, the Congress
President demonstrated her inability to distinguish between loyalty and
sycophancy. Remember Oscar Fernandez weeping inconsolably because “Madame” had
refused the crown. And the dim Renuka Chaudhury let loose upon chat show
audiences as some sort of a Congress intellectual. She too was rewarded for
having wept copiously at “Mam’s” refusal of the crown.
From the very outset, Sonia Gandhi was
credited with charisma she never had. P.V. Narasimha Rao had brought the party
down to 140 seats in the 1996 elections. Sonia Gandhi never improved on the
party’s dismal performance. In 2009, when the Congress bagged 209 seats, the
credit was placed at Rahul Gandhi’s door for having generated a great youth
surge. The solitary beneficiary of this faulty diagnosis was Omar Abdullah. His
father’s candidature as Chief Minister was set aside in deference to the “youth
surge”. Omar proceeded to have a ball by setting up a lavish bungalow in
Lutyens Delhi and became a commuting Chief Minister with remote control.
The leader of the youth brigade, Rahul
Gandhi, kept the Congress, opposition, captains of Industry, the media, on
sixes and sevens with his hare brained schemes about a new system of selecting
candidates. Even if Congress leaders saw great merit in Rahul Gandhi’s pearls
of wisdom, the nation, 65 percent of which is populated by under 35 years of
age, saw through the rubbish. The drubbing they have administered in these elections
will keep the Gandhis against the ropes, gasping. If they do not chalk out an
exit strategy for themselves and, in a dazed state, wait for the state
elections, I am afraid they are waiting for a knockout punch. It would be nice
if the Gandhis make way gracefully. The country needs a focused opposition.
After the Babri Masjid debacle, P.V.
Narasimha Rao called a Congress session at Tirupati in 1993. The party elected
a Working Committee not to Narasimha Rao’s liking – Arjun Singh, Sharad Pawar,
Rajesh Pilot and so on. Willfully, he found reasons to annul the AICC results.
Well, the Gandhis must hold similar elections and, unlike P.V., abide by the
results. Otherwise they will be trapped like sparrows in a movie hall flapping against
the giant screen in full public view.
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