Going rate of loyalty

May.05 : No political party can be said to have come out with any great gains in the voting that took place on April 27 on the cut motions tabled by the Opposition parties in Parliament. The Congress, no doubt, won with a handsome margin (289 against 201) but I will deal here with the negative side of the voting.

This trial of strength should be considered a defeat the Opposition parties unnecessarily invited upon themselves. Insisting on a cut motion in a parliamentary system of government is as serious a matter as a no-confidence motion. Normally, Opposition parties make such moves when they know that there is at least a slim chance of success or they want to demonstrate the Oppositions’ unity.
If the voting on April 27 has proved anything at all, it is that there is not even a remote chance of throwing out the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government and that there is not a semblance of that thing called “Opposition unity” against the government.
The Opposition’s defeat was evident well before the debate on the cut motions started. Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) Mayawati had publicly announced her party’s support for the UPA government, and Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Lalu Prasad Yadav and Samajwadi Party’s Mulayam Singh Yadav were both vulnerable as they were facing charges by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) against them. It was almost certain that they would resort to some sort of deal with the UPA. When the time for the headcount came, these two leaders walked out without voting, either in favour or against the government — a convenient route available to politicians who find themselves in a dilemma.
Now let us examine the manner in which some political parties reacted to the cut motions and to what extent they contributed to further lowering the standards of political morality.
It is, of course, the Congress Party’s duty to ensure that the designs of the Opposition parties are frustrated when its survival is at stake. However, in a democracy this is to be done without weakening the credibility and prestige of law-enforcing organisations like the Intelligence Bureau and CBI in any way. Whatever may be the truth, the common people in India believe that the UPA government misused its power to influence the CBI to dilute the charges against some important Opposition leaders in the cases pending against them in return for their favourable stand in the cut motions. Many responsible newspapers and news channels have openly made these allegations, with details of what is being described as quid pro quo for the support of certain Opposition leaders. If these allegations are true, certainly the ruling party has paid a rather heavy price for its survival. The spokespersons of the UPA government have denied the allegation, but they were hardly expected to own up.
Now let us consider the stand of Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav in the voting on the cut motions. He brazenly asked how a “secular” politician like him could have gone along with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in voting against the government. “What face will we show to people if we go along with the BJP?” asked Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav. “What will we say in reply when people ask why we went with that party?” One would have thought that Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav — who found his strength reduced from 22 to four seats in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections without having gone with the BJP as an ally — would have found it difficult to “face” the people in the next elections and explain his discomfiture at the polls. Some political leaders seem to think that most of their followers are still unintelligent, gullible and disinterested in politics. They do not realise that the common people have learnt well to judge the motives and actions of their leaders and they no longer readily accept the justifications peddled by them.
Recently, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav has been one of the loudest among the Opposition leaders in criticising the Congress, though his criticism of the BSP had always been in a much higher decibel. He sees both the Congress and the BSP as his rivals in Uttar Pradesh, but his critics are now accusing him of being over careful about burning his bridges with the UPA government. He shares the vulnerability of Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav as far as cases against him are concerned and this gives credence to the allegation about his motive for choosing to walk out without voting.
Ms Mayawati’s support for the UPA government has not left anyone in doubt as to why she did so, even though she continues to spit fire at the mere mention of the Congress. Her position is more vulnerable than that of Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav and Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav because of the charges of wasteful expenditure of public funds and possession of unaccountable wealth and assets against her. Refuting the allegation that she voted for the government expecting appropriate rewards for her support, she has said that she voted for the government only “to keep the communal forces at bay”. By “communal forces” she, of course, meant the BJP, forgetting the irony in her statement that communal politics is dangerous to the nation’s interest while her brand of caste-based politics is not.
The BJP feels embarrassed in casting its lot with other Opposition parties in the vote against the government because some of these Opposition parties are still refusing to place their confidence in the BJP. The most unexpected fallout of the vote on the cut motions has been the “betrayal”, as the BJP described it, by Jharkhand Mukti Morcha’s Shibu Soren who voted against the cut motions. The BJP appears to have been taken aback by this somersault of Mr Soren and promptly decided to withdraw support from the government he heads. However, one can legitimately ask the BJP why it decided in the first place to support Mr Soren as chief minister of Jharkhand knowing pretty well his questionable antecedents in both Jharkhand and national politics. Obviously, the BJP in its anxiety to prevent the Congress from heading the government in Jharkhand was prepared to go to the extent of lending support even to Mr Soren. So the BJP, in fact, invited this “betrayal” by its own decision four months ago to join hands with Mr Soren.

P.C. Alexander is a former governor of Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra

P.C. Alexander