Commentary/Saisuresh Sivaswamy

Elections are now an unlikely scenario

A full two days after the government was voted out of office, the nation still does not know its future.

The United Front, which weathered the storm in a predictable manner, has not deemed it fit to tell the people if its leaders intend to recommend the dissolution of Parliament to the President or if they will try and work out another, more enduring arrangement at the Centre.

All the nation has had have been two days of political deliberations, and with the deadlock continuing at the Centre, one will be seeing the politicians indulge in more verbal exercises.

Since a full eleven days passed between the time when the Congress party withdrew its support and the confidence vote, it is anybody's guess as to why the future course of action was not finalised in that time frame.

What the delay indicates is that neither side actually expected things to come to such a pass -- that the trust motion will be voted upon. Both pinned their hopes on a solution being worked out before that. And since the unexpected has happened, no one knows what really needs to be done.

A lot has been made of the Congress party's fear of elections; but now it is equally clear that the United Front too is not keen on going back to the people, despite their leaders's bravado before television cameras. If there was indeed unanimity among the numerous constituents on this question, the Deve Gowda Cabinet's last action would have been asking the President to dissolve Parliament.

Obviously, power is not something one can do without, even if one has enjoyed its fruits for less than ten months. It is all the more difficult when one has conditioned oneself to the trappings of office for another five years; also, given that for many of the members of the outgoing council of ministers it was their first stint in the national capital, the thought of going back cannot be pleasant.

Sitaram Kesri, being the veteran that he is, perhaps knew it all along. He perhaps also knew that no non-Congress formation at the Centre has really succeeded in completing its term, and that a stint by such an entity was invariably followed by the Congress's return to power. With history backing him, it is possible that the stars were now shining on his party once again.

The Congress is not very comfortable with the thought of another round of elections. All indications like assembly elections, by-polls and even panchayat polls have shown that the party's support base is rapidly shrinking, and Kesri's own leadership has not enthused the masses in any great way that they will troop out and vote for the party.

The bigger surprise is the Front's own aversion to elections now. Apart from the constituents's own reluctance to lay down the accoutrements of power, it could also stem from the fact that most of its constituents are regional parties with a limited resource base. Given the actual logistics of fighting a parliamentary election, most of them do not have the wherewithal to see through two rounds of elections in one financial year. And this may be the more weighty reason that the parties are still working out a modus vivendi.

Sitaram Kesri's problem right through this crisis has been that he has not been able to communicate to his flock first the reasons for withdrawing support to the government out of the blue and then not unveiling to them the post-vote scenario that he has in mind. Obviously he knew all along that the Front will elect a new leader in place of Deve Gowda and will once again turn to the Congress for support, but he has not taken his MPs into confidence about this. Which is why they are angry. It is remarkable that even two days after his MPs pulled down the government on his say-so, he has not met the Congress Parliamentary Party!

The question that is going to be asked increasingly of him is, if the actual reason behind ditching the United Front was that it was eliminating the Congress party, what guarantee is there that this scenario will not be repeated in any future arrangement between the two sides?

The reality of the situation demands that the two sides discuss the question of seat arrangements between them for future elections -- both parliamentary and state-level -- since any arrangement, however carefully worked out, will ultimately come apart over this question.

For how can the Janata Dal seek the Congress party's support in New Delhi, but hope to treat it as the main rival in next year's elections in Karnataka?

P Chidambaram called this government the first true experiment in federalism since Independence, or used words to such effect. If he was sincere in his meaning, and Chidambaram is a sincere man if nothing else, then the Front must ensure that the experiment does not collapse under the weight of its internal contradictions, as such experiments in 1977 and 1989 did. The two sides have also expounded a lot on the imperative for keeping the 'forces of communalism' (read the Bharatiya Janata Party) out, but neither has clarified if that imperative applies only to the 11th Lok Sabha.

By all accounts, the single largest party in this House has been reduced to being the main Opposition party thanks to these two coming together, but again, if the Congress and the United Front are serious about stalling the BJP's progress to power, their alliance needs to be taken out of the 11th Lok Sabha and into the countryside. Or else, it is the BJP, which is the force both sides want to stave off, that will benefit from a division in the centrist vote.

And that, if one stops to consider it, is quite a remarkable achievement. For, till quite recently, there were two sides in Indian politics -- Congress and those opposed to it. Today, it is the BJP and forces opposed to it. But more on this, later.

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