Electoral politics seems to have hit an all-time low - what with some party chiefs demanding independent statehoods in neighbouring countries while others are wanting the dismissal of duly elected state governments.
Only 86 of the 543 Lok Sabha constituencies have yet to go to the polls but this does not mean that the woes and pains of the 15th general election are over. Nearly half of the seats to go through the last phase of the electoral battle are in Tamil Nadu, the southern state that is swept by inflamed passions over the inevitable fall-out of what looks like the concluding stage of Sri Lanka’s ethnic war. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is now on the verge of extinction, and President Mahinda Rajapakse of the island republic remains determined to decimate it. He is impervious to the appeals of the international community, including India’s, to halt the war until innocent civilians caught in the crossfire partly because of the LTTE’S barbarous tactic of using them as human shields can be rescued. The suffering of the beleaguered Tamil civilians is heart-rending. Foreign relief agencies just cannot reach them. This has understandably angered even those Indian Tamils who intensely dislike the LTTE and condemn its terrorist activities and savagery.
Sadly, however, the reaction of Tamil Nadu’s political parties to the events in Sri Lanka has turned perverse in recent days. Compulsions born of the poll have doubtless aggravated the problem but not created it. Utter disregard of national interest and elementary norms of international relations is the result of parochial feelings and political expediency. Time was when, barring, zealots such as Vaiko, rival political parties and leaders in Tamil Nadu made a clear distinction between sympathy for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority and support to the thugs and murderers of the LTTE. But things began to change fast as the war in Sri Lanka reached its endgame and it became manifest that the LTTE was at the end of its tether. The state chief minister and the patriarch of the Dravid Munnetra Khagham (DMK), M Karunanidhi, was the first to drop his previous pretence and to declare that Villupillai Prabhakaran was not a terrorist but a “friend” of his. His archrival and former chief minister, J Jayalalithaa, then jumped over his head and made a plea for the LTTE’S demand for eelam or independence of Tamil areas of Sri Lanka. Karunanidhi followed suit. Thus both the mainstream Dravidian parties are backing something that India rightly rejects and which Sri Lanka would oppose bitterly. Colombo might even ask how would India react, if it and other countries start supporting the demand for an independent Kashmir or independent Nagaland or whatever?
The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in New Delhi has worsened the mess in Tamil Nadu by its clumsiness born perhaps of its own electoral dilemmas. All it did was to disassociate itself with the demand for eelam but refrained from remonstrating with either its ally, the DMK, or with the AIADMK of Jayalalitha, presumably because, as Rahul Gandhi’s statement at his definitive press conference indicated, the Congress considers her as a potential ally. The reason for the attempted switching of sides is that, in keeping with the Tamil Nadu tradition, the two main parties alternate as victors in successive elections. In 2004 Karunanidhi had won almost all the Lok Sabha seats in his state. This time around the general expectation is that Jayalalitha would turn the tables. In short, Tamil Nadu is going to the polls in a volatile, indeed explosive, atmosphere while the Union government is unable to do anything except wring its hands.
This seems the right juncture to move to another disastrous and shocking development in an election in which there have been no holds barred right from the beginning. Since the current poll is also the most unpredictable, everyone is keeping his and her cards close to their chest. Existing alliances have lost all meaning because every party, big or small says: “All options are open”. In simple language this means that only after it knows on May 16 how much leverage it has acquired would every party, group or splinter decide its course of action. This, needless to add, would depend on the price that each one can command. Standards of political discourse and bargaining have been excruciatingly low, and now Mulayam Singh, the Samajwadi Party’s “netaji”, has brought them to rock bottom. He has proclaimed that his party would join whichever side agrees to dismiss the Mayawati government. Nothing can be more absurd, anti-democratic and unacceptable. Mayawati’s government is a duly elected state government. It is indeed the first single-party government in Uttar Pradesh in more than a decade. If Mulayam Singh or anyone else has a grievance against it, there are judicial remedies for it. After all, the Allahabad high court panel has overridden the UP government’s decision to invoke the National Security Act against Varun Gandhi. But to make the dismissal of a duly elected state government a pre-condition for joining or sustaining the Union government is dangerous and disgraceful beyond words.
To be sure, in 1998 Jayalalitha had tried, albeit unsuccessfully, a similar trick but she had done it more subtly. She backed the Vajpayee government on the basis of a private promise that court cases against her would be withdrawn. When this could not be done, she brought the government down. In the 1999 election, the Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was re-elected. One wonders what the AIADMK leader would do after May 16, as she is being wooed by all three sides – the Congress, the BJP and the third front of which she is supposed to be a member.
It goes without saying that Rahul Gandhi’s press conference was a formal declaration of his anointment as the next Congress leader. Should a Congress-led coalition return to power, Manmohan Singh would be the Prime Minister but the sceptre of party leadership has been virtually passed from mother to son. This makes Rahul’s wooing of adversaries – especially Nitish Kumar in Bihar, Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra and of the Leftists everywhere – rather odd. Hadn’t the Prime Minister, the Congress president and Rahul himself rubbished the Left in general and the CPI (M) in particular? All those he sought to win over rebuffed the Congress Crown Prince. But then this is democracy with Indian characteristics.