Mamata Banerjee came to power on a wave of unprecedented goodwill, which she appears to have dissipated in record time
Trinamul Congress leader and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced her party’s support for UPA presidential nominee Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday, bowing to political pressure and against her own inclination. She did so with bad grace, which is not wholly surprising given the way she has conducted herself of late.
She did so with just two days to go for the election, and only after she realised that Mr Mukherjee was going to romp home with or without her support. In short, Ms Banerjee agreed to back the candidate put forward by the UPA, to which she technically still belongs, when she found herself painted into a corner.
The Trinamul Congress president could have asked her MPs and MLAs to abstain, but there were signs that such an instruction might be disregarded by some of them. That meant risking cracks in her party, which she otherwise runs in an almost dictatorial manner. There was another choice for Ms Banerjee. She could have backed NDA candidate Purno A. Sangma, but such a move may have alienated many of her supporters who swear by “secularism”, and that would have meant giving the Left, her arch rivals in the state, a leg up.
In giving in to UPA’s and Congress’ request for supporting Mr Mukherjee’s candidature so late in the day, the Trinamul supremo has earned no political brownie points. Her stock in the eyes of her own faithful would have taken a beating. More, today she can no longer be sure that her tantrums on key policy issues — such as the National Counter-Terrorism Centre, opening multi-brand retail businesses to foreign investors, or the Lokpal conundrum — will be heeded. Seeing Ms Banerjee’s obstructionist politics overturn expectations over a long period, the Congress has found political insurance elsewhere. So the irrelevance of the Trinamul Congress as far as the UPA’s longevity is concerned has now been well and truly underlined.
Often the politics of brinkmanship springs from the politics of opportunism, which can hurt when it boomerangs. The BJP and NDA were applauding Ms Banerjee from the sidelines as she tried to corner the Congress-led UPA. Now they too are likely to be wary of her. Ms Banerjee came to power on a wave of unprecedented goodwill, which she appears to have dissipated in record time.
With few options left, for the vice-president’s election it is quite possible that Ms Banerjee will also back Hamid Ansari, who has been renominated by the UPA. That will be the true bitter pill, for she opposed Mr Ansari’s candidature all along. In effect, what we are seeing now is Ms Banerjee’s political isolation, which really flows from lack of maturity as a politician.