MAFIA MAMA TO BE STRIPPED IN PARLIAMENT
Dr. Jai Maharaj
The Pioneer, via News Plus
http://www.mantra.com/newsplus
Tuesday, October 12, 1999
At the end of a series of backroom manouveres through the
day, both her coterie and her rivals, managed to trap a
beleagured Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Monday into
accepting the office of the chairperson of the Congress
Party in Parliament as well as the Leader of the
Opposition.
By Lakshmi Iyer, in Nayee Dillee
At the end of a series of backroom manouveres through the
day, both her coterie and her rivals, managed to trap a
beleagured Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Monday into
accepting the office of the chairperson of the Congress
Party in Parliament as well as the Leader of the
Opposition.
Ms Gandhi, who is to be formally elected CPP leader on
Tuesday with the unanimous adoption of a resolution, was
initally reported to be disinclined to don the mantle of
the Leader of Opposition. Her supporters felt she was
unsuitable for the job becuse of her lack of experience
in parliamentary procedures.
She has, however, now virtually been trapped into
accepting the dual posts after several senior leaders
sounded her coterie that they would force a contest for
the LOP post if she was not going to accept it. In other
words, the leaders indicated that they would not accept
her nominee.
Initially, her coterie had mooted the elevation of former
UP Chief Minister N D Tiwari to the post of LOP. Ms
Gandhi's stated preference for him provoked a number of
aspirants including Jitendra Prasada, Rajesh Pilot, Kamal
Nath, Madhavrao Scindia to press their own claim to the
post.
Party sources said confirmation of Ms Gandhi's acceptance
of the LOP job was indicated in the joint statement
issued by the AICC secretaries on Monday evening.
In the statement they said Ms Gandhi should be the Leader
of the Opposition. This, they said, would be in addition
to her fulfilling responsibilities as CPP chairperson and
party president.
"She is the undisputed leader of the party. Parliament is
the forum in which the political battle is joined. The
party needs to have a leadear who would lead from the
front," they said.
The signatories to the statement were Manishankar Aiyar,
Ramesh Chennithala, (both Lok Sabah members), Imran
Kidwai, Sudhir Sawant and Mukul Wasnik.
The statement thrilled Ms Gandhi's rivals. "Ab ayega
maza, (Now there'll be fun)" was how a former Union
Minister responded to the AICC office-bearers statement.
He elaborated, "We wanted her to be the LOP". The whole
idea, he said, was to expose her inability to keep the
Government on its toes. He said: "We have to establish
her as an all-round failure".
Ambitious senior leaders, outside her coterie, are
looking forward to the Government take the court
directions in the IGCNA case and other related public
interest litigations to its logical conclusion.
In anticipation of such moves, the party leaders consider
it important for Ms Gandhi to occupy the LOP post so as
give them an opportunity to force her out of it just the
way former Pirme Minister P V Narasimha Rao was ousted
out of the LOP post in 1997 after he was brought to trial
in corruption cases pending against him.
Party sources said a number of senior leaders were no
longer in a mood to give Ms Gandhi another chance in
leading the party. At the same time, they do not want to
immediately mount a challenge to her. One of the leaders
said, "We want to prepare ousrselves to take over the
mantle. A consensus must emerge amongst us. We gave her a
chance. She failed. We do not want to give her another
chance. But we have to completely discredit her".
Another CWC member said it was important for Ms Gandhi to
don the mantle of the LOP to show that she was dead
serious about a career in politics. He said, "Here was
she ready to become Prime Minister. If she does not
become LOP, the BJP will have a nice stick to beat her
with. It will go to town to say that all she was
interested was power and not people/politics".
A senior leader said, "Even if she does not become the
LOP, the process to destablise her would be initiated the
momment she declares a floor leader for the party. All
those left out would gang up against her nominee."
Sources said the race for the LOP position in Rajya Sabha
was also getting keen. Besides Mr Mukherjee, others in
queue are Mr S B Chavan, Mr NKP Salve and some like to
think even former Congress president Sitaram Kesri. If Ms
Gandhi's rivals in the party are stated to be a secret
legion, her fawning supporters are one too many.
The coterie, as they are called, is equally working
overtime to bulldoze any minor irritant to the
leadership. Even though there are two AICC resolutions
authorising the Congress president to reorganise the
party structure, the coterie has reportedly begun seeking
resignation of the entire AICC as well as the CWC.
Party sources said at least two AICC general secretaries
including R K Dhawan and Madhavrao Scindia and the
elected CWC members were resisting the pressure to put in
their papers. These functionaries were reportedly not
confident of finding a place in a reshuffle.
On Monday evening, the coterie organised the AICC general
secretaries to meet at the residence of Mr Pranab
Mukherjee to draft resolutions to be adopted at the CPP
meeting on Tuesday. One of the resolutions reportedly
makes light of winning and losing elections. Another
reposes faith in Ms Gandhi's leadership yet again and
thanking her for it.
The coterie's contention is that Ms Gandhi should
continue to lead the party as she was not the one who
wanted to lead it. Leadership of the party was an
assignment thrust upon her and should continue to be
thrust upon her.
Sources said the coterie was also keen to ensure that Ms
Gandhi is not offended in the slightest. It has been most
vociferous in denying the demand for Ms Gandhi's
resignation.
Sources said after going through the charade of resigning
in May and withdrawing her resignation a week later Ms
Gandhi could not afford to resort to the same strategy.
In these circumstances, the coterie felt, it was its
responsibility to save her the embarassment.
Which was why amidst a spate of resignations by party
general secretaries in the wake of its poll debacle, the
Congress on Monday ruled out resignation of Sonia Gandhi
as party chief.
Confirming that the general secretaries have quit
"voluntarily", party spokespersonan Ajit Jogi said there
was no question of Ms Gandhi resigning owning moral
responsibility for the reverses as her "able and
competent" leadership has helped the organisation
Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for the
educational purposes of research and open discussion.
Panchaang for Monday, October 11, 1999:
Pramathin Nama Samvatsare Dakshinaya Jivana Ritau
Kanya Mase Shukla Pakshe Indu Vasara Yuktayam
Svati-Vishakha Nakshatra Vishakumbha-Priti Yog
Taitila-Gara Karana Triteeya Yam Tithau
Jai Maharaj
http://www.mantra.com/jyotish
Latest world news:
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Om Shanti
reddy
Young MPs blame senior leaders for the Congress debacle
http://www.the-week.com/99oct17/cover.htm
It was a question every Congress leader wished to duck. But to their
discomfort it popped up with every hit on the computer screen installed at
the AICC headquarters. 'Despite Sonia Gandhi the Congress has not fared
well. Is there a question mark on her leadership?' 'What you did to Sitaram
Kesri, will you do to Sonia Gandhi too?' About 1,000 people a day logged on
to a chat show on the Web, hosted by an online newspaper, with similar
queries soon after the worst-ever Congress debacle.
Overwhelming support: Sonia Gandhi
Congress leaders are obviously not interested in pondering the vital issue
of leadership now. Instead, Sonia loyalists have joined force to shield her
from any attack. There is no way they are going to allow the dismal
performance to be seen as the moral or political defeat of the Congress
president.
"The no. 1 slot will always be reserved for the Gandhi name. It is what
gives the party an identity and a rallying point," explained a leader. But
with the defeat of Manmohan Singh the race for the no. 2 slot is wide open.
"It has to be seen if Sonia will appoint a working president, who will also
be the deputy leader of the party in the Lok Sabha," said the leader.
To deflect criticism from Sonia, the younger leaders have targeted Congress
Working Committee members Arjun Singh and Pranab Mukherjee. They are being
accused of pitching for wrong decisions which contributed to the debacle.
"There has to be a major shake-up if the party is to be revived," said a
Congress MP. "It is time the party president took some hard decisions."
Mukherjee is being held responsible for the Haryana mess-up (briefly backing
Bansi Lal and then withdrawing support under pressure from Bhajan Lal)
whereas Arjun Singh is accused of pushing for a tie-up with Laloo Prasad
Yadav in Bihar.
Those looking for scapegoats feel that the leaders who were responsible for
mistakes made from the day of the famous tea party prior to the Vajpayee
government's fall should be given the boot.
Rashmi Saksena
reddy
The thorn for Vajpayee will not be future Jayalalithas
but hard economic decisions
By Sachidananda Murthy
http://www.the-week.com/99oct17/cover.htm
A billion hopes. Atal Bihari Vajpayee again shoulders mankind's second
biggest burden, surpassed only by the load of China's Jiang Zemin. Vajpayee
will lead India into the 21st century after defeating the party led by the
widow of the man who first spoke of the next century. If he wore a crown of
thorns in 1998 ever worried about the pinpricks of Jayalalitha, now it is a
crown of blooming petals.
It is a mandate for continuity and change. Endless burfi packets were
emptied to feed happy mouths at 7, Race Course Road, where Vajpayee was the
first Prime Minister to celebrate retention of power.
Despite some reverses Vajpayee has outsmarted Sonia in the charisma contest
As Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra gave a checklist of things to be done,
the Prime Minister was at his enthusiastic best. The first 60 days would see
a flurry of economic initiatives to spur growth as the coalition capitalises
on the honeymoon period. Long-elusive political stability would make
Vajpayee a man in a hurry as he now realises that it is the economy which
matters most. But there will be some pain also as the new government tries
to raise taxes to realise at least Rs 5,000 crore. The pain could come in
the form of a Kargil tax and increases in price of petroleum products.
Fifteen years ago, as BJP president, Vajpayee suffered a massive defeat in
Gwalior at the hands of Madhavrao Scindia of the Congress. His party could
win just two seats then. Now, Gwalior is among the 300 constituencies where
Vajpayee's charisma has worked. Of course, Scindia made things easier by
moving to Guna, where he scored an impressive win.
Despite the bad shows in Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka for which local leaders
hold Vajpayee responsible, Vajpayee has outsmarted Sonia Gandhi in the
charisma contest. With development-thirsty allies like Chandrababu Naidu and
Mamata Banerjee egging him on, Vajpayee would be pressing the accelerator on
the economic front by opening up the insurance sector for foreign
investment.
In what turned out to be a presidential style contest with newcomer Sonia
Gandhi, Vajpayee kept the lead throughout the nerve-racking five months
between Lok Sabha dissolution and the final phase of polling. Realising the
unique selling proposition they had in him, the other BJP leaders yielded
him the centrestage.
In 1998, the BJP had projected Vajpayee as the 'Man India Awaits'. Now as he
gets busy with his heavy agenda of governance and second phase of electoral
reforms, he is the man the "21st century India awaits".
Power and Glory
The BJP has widened its reach across the country. The once north-centred
party now has MPs from even Goa and the Andamans.
It was Atal Bihari Vajpayee's last chance, and he knew it. He was carrying
the entire weight of the National Democratic Alliance's electoral campaign
on his ageing shoulders. It was in his name that the NDA sought votes in the
13th general election. Everything else was secondary. The flip side of such
overwhelming dependence on one individual was that if the votes did not come
in, Vajpayee would have had to bear the cross.
The votes did come in, and the NDA crossed the half way mark in the Lok
Sabha. And as the chief architect of the NDA victory it is Vajpayee's moment
of glory once again, a repeat of the heady days of March 1998. Vajpayee is
now a Prime Minister who has won two elections back to back, the only one to
do so since Indira Gandhi in 1971, and the coalition's majority, though far
from comfortable, is not as razor thin as it was last time.
In his hour of triumph, however, Vajpayee was uncharacteristically reticent.
"Barring one or two states the alliance has done well," he said. Other
leaders were only slightly more forthcoming. Home Minister L.K. Advani
preferred to dwell exclusively on the BJP's clean sweep of all the seven
seats in Delhi. "All the exit polls on Delhi went wrong," he said. "We had
never achieved this feat before."
The Allies
The jubilation in the BJP camp is tempered by the awareness that though the
coalition has won more seats than last time, the BJP itself has not been
able to increase its share of seats. From a mere 2 seats in 1984 to 182 in
1998, the BJP had been increasing its tally with every general election. But
not this time.
The allies, barring the Shiromani Akali Dal and the JD(U) in Karnataka, have
performed better, making the BJP even more dependent on them. "Even the
allies sought votes in Vajpayee's name," said BJP general secretary Narendra
Modi. "Many voted for them because they wanted to see Vajpayee as Prime
Minister."
The most spectacular success has been the alliance with the Telugu Desam
Party (TDP), which was pushed through by Vajpayee himself much against the
wishes of the BJP's cadres in Andhra Pradesh. Yet another was the roping in
of the DMK.
But the TDP is not yet formally a member of the NDA, and BJP leaders are
already worrying about precisely what sort of relationship the party would
want to have with it. With just 12 MPs in the last Lok Sabha, Chandrababu
Naidu forced the BJP to accept his nominee G.M.C. Balayogi as Lok Sabha
Speaker. With 30 MPs now, what will he demand?
In Karnataka it was once again Vajpayee who insisted on roping in J.H.
Patel, in the teeth of opposition from the BJP state unit. Party leaders now
feel they would have done much better had they gone it alone.
For Vajpayee, however, allies have a utility beyond the seats they add to
the NDA tally. He can use them, if need arises, to counter his RSS-backed
opponents within the BJP. He has done it once before, during the controversy
over allowing foreign investment in the insurance sector, and he can do it
again, if need arises. He would rather suffer the likes of Patel than risk
losing the support of allies like Ramakrishna Hegde and George Fernandes.
"Success and failure are both part of politics," said BJP spokesman Venkaiah
Naidu, denying any rethinking on the alliance in Karnataka. "We do not turn
away from our allies just because they have not done well in one election."
The strategy
To what extent did the BJP strategy work? The main points of the strategy
were apparent from the start. First was the emphasis on reinstating Vajpayee
as Prime Minister. This approach worked well: from every corner of the
country, substantial votes were garnered in Vajpayee's name.
The other features of the BJP's campaign proved less successful: the
excessive harping on the Kargil victory, for instance. Though the official
BJP line was that Kargil was a national achievement and would not be made a
political issue, the BJP campaigners' speeches belied the claim.
BJP leaders now say that Kargil helped them only in the initial stages of
this inordinately long election schedule. In states like Uttar Pradesh and
Bihar, which went to the polls only in the last three phases, Kargil was
hardly talked about.
The relentless harping on Sonia Gandhi's foreign origins also appears to
have had little effect. Sonia won both the seats she contested by good
margins, and there was little to prove that the Congress failures in
different states had much to do with this issue.
The BJP also erred in believing that in a national election, local issues
would be of little consequence. Wherever it has performed poorly, it has
borne the brunt of the voters' annoyance with the state government. If the
Congress performed poorly in Rajasthan, one major reason was the party's
failure to get the Jats included in the list of backward castes.
Successes
The most striking success of the BJP has been in Delhi where it captured all
seven seats. Less than a year ago it had been routed in the assembly
elections.
In Rajasthan the BJP made a comeback thanks to wide support from the Jats
and the lacklustre performance of the Ashok Gehlot government. In other
states where major gains have been made, it was the allies who played the
main role: the TDP in Andhra Pradesh, the DMK in Tamil Nadu, the Indian
National Lok Dal in Haryana, the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, the Samata Party
[or JD(U)] in Bihar, and the Biju Janata Dal in Orissa.
Failures
There have been failures in Punjab and Karnataka but these have been
primarily the failures of its allies. The BJP's own failure has been in UP.
In UP the BJP and allies had won 60 of the 85 seats in the last general
election. Both Vajpayee and Murli Manohar Joshi were contesting from this
state. Most importantly the opposition was hopelessly divided. And yet the
BJP could retain only half the seats it won last time.
Narendra Modi attributed the setback to "low voter turnout and tactical
voting against us". But 'tactical voting' by Muslims has been a feature of
UP elections for many years. On earlier occasions it could not stop the BJP
as it polarised Hindu votes in the party's favour. Why did it work this
time?
It worked because it was not only the Muslims who engaged in tactical
voting. Cutting across caste, large numbers of traditional BJP supporters
too voted for the candidates best equipped to defeat the BJP's nominee. Some
did so to express their disgust at the poor performance of either the state
government or the sitting MP; others because they were urged by local BJP
leaders to vote that way.
Conclusion
There has one positive fallout of the BJP's UP debacle. In the last Lok
Sabha nearly one-third of the BJP's total strength of 182 came from UP
alone. With the BJP's tally in UP drastically reduced, the party's influence
is now much more evenly distributed across the country.
It now has an all-India presence barring a handful of states. It has picked
up seats even in Goa and the Andamans!
reddy
http://www.the-week.com/99oct17/events1.htm
Worldwide: The media that covered the Louise Woodward case with great
interest is nowhere around in the case of Manjit Basuta. To some, its
attitude smacks of racism. Others feel the disinterest may have made things
worse
for Basuta, sentenced to 25 years.
On October 1, Manjit Kaur Basuta was sentenced to 25 years in prison in San
Diego. Like Louise Woodward, the English au pair whose trial in
Massachusetts dominated world media in 1997, Basuta was accused of angrily
shaking a toddler to death. Unlike Woodward, however, Basuta's story barely
made news.
"The American press only reported the negative aspects of the trial," says
Basuta's brother Sukhdev. "Our papers saw those articles, concluded she was
guilty, and decided not to give her too much attention."
Basuta, an India-born Briton, claimed that the March 17, 1998 death of
13-month-old Oliver Smith was an accident.
more at the above site.
reddy
The answer to the voters' urge for unity and security lay not in Sonia but
in Vajpayee
Opinion:Sudheendra Kulkarni
http://www.outlookindia.com/issue3/affairsrl9.htm
On that hot April 17 afternoon when the conspiracy to topple Atal Behari
Vajpayee's government succeeded by one vote, victory came donning the look
of a shock defeat. Triumph lay hidden in the tears that rolled down the
faces of those who followed, in slow steps of disbelief, the prime minister
as he came out of the Lok Sabha and walked towards his chamber in Parliament
House. It took 173 days for the conspirators to find that their misadventure
had backfired and that the nation's tallest leader whom they had unseated
was back in the saddle with a bigger, more emphatic mandate from the only
kingmaker in our democracy-the Indian voter.
I had to submit a column for Outlook on that day analysing the trust vote
debate in Parliament and its outcome, and the extended deadline was in the
afternoon. Anticipating victory for the government, I had nearly finished
writing it in the morning itself. But the night had written a secret script
for the day that followed. I rushed from Parliament to my office in South
Block, scrapped my article, and hurriedly re-wrote it. And this is what I
predicted in the column that appeared on April 26. "With the success of
'Operation Manipulation', the combination of Harkishen Singh Surjeet,
Subramanian Swamy and Arjun Singh has proved its lethal destructive power.
But what has it really destroyed? Vajpayee's popularity? No way. Let him hit
the roads, and Sonia Gandhi's sycophants will see what it takes to be a mass
leader. The Vajpayee magic will hit the manipulators like a thunderbolt."
The polls have vindicated this prediction.
Of all the issues that figured in this election, the one that stood out
above all, and the one that subsumed all in its sharp singularity, was this:
"Do the people want Vajpayee as their prime minister or not?" The answer was
available in April itself. Events of June and July only highlighted it. When
the Congress-led Opposition, in a show of irresponsibility as reckless as it
was unprecedented, tried to paint Vajpayee's victorious handling of the
Kargil war as betrayal and worse, only the purblind could miss the
inevitable.
The people have given their verdict unambiguously. Unlike what the cover
story in this magazine said a couple of issues back, the race between
Vajpayee and Sonia was never "closer than you think". In a democracy, what
you get for indulging in reckless destabilisation-and let's not forget that
three non-Congress governments were toppled at her behest in three years-is
not reward but rejection.
Voters have punished the Congress by rejecting it in '96, and now in '99.
But there's a reason why the Congress cannot learn the lessons from its
defeat. It has sold its soul to the undemocratic principle of dynasty. And
dynasty thinks it's born to rule. As is only to be expected from any durbar
culture, many Congressmen think that members of the Nehru dynasty have a
birthright to rule India. (A small digression here: it is wrong to call it a
Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. The derivative benefit that its members have been
reaping from the name "Gandhi" is because it establishes a non-existent
association with the hallowed legacy of Mahatma Gandhi. Had Feroze Gandhi
been born into a family with a different Parsi surname such as Antia or
Sopariwala, India's post-Nehru history would have been quite different!)
The Nehru-Gandhi name retains its appeal for its capacity to symbolise
national unity. Every nation needs certain organic symbols as powerful
reminders to its people of their unity and their concern for security. After
independence, Congress was the only party around that fulfilled this need in
the political arena. But once its decline started and no stable alternative
emerged, Indira Gandhi transformed the Congress as a borough of herself and
her sons, so that the Family could serve as the sole political symbol of
India's unity. If an inexperienced Rajiv Gandhi could lead the Congress to a
400-plus victory in '84 in the wake of his mother's assassination (it was a
wave election in which even Vajpayee lost), it was because he symbolised
Indian people's concern for national unity and security.
By the same logic, if his widow has failed to lead the Congress to victory
in the '99 polls, it's due to two inter-related reasons. One, by no stretch
of imagination can she project herself as a symbol of our national unity;
she couldn't even keep the Congress united. The second reason is more
important. In the '90s, India has for the first time seen the emergence of a
stable non-Congress political formation, the bjp, in which the people see
the picture of India's unity. Also, for the first time in many decades,
India has seen in Vajpayee a leader with a pan-Indian appeal who belongs
neither to the Family nor even to the Congress and yet answers to their urge
for unity and security. The bjp's success in striking alliances with parties
that previously would have nothing to do with it, and Vajpayee's success in
gaining equal acceptance in the multi-hued alliance, are the most
significant political phenomena after the failed Janata Party experiment in
the late '70s.
Vajpayee has fulfilled two criteria for electoral success-democratic
stability and national unity. The challenge before him now is to
successfully meet the third criterion: development. No longer can polls be
won on slogans of "garibi hatao". The bold message of election '99 is that
development-oriented reforms, if sincerely implemented, make not only
economic but also electoral sense. Vajpayee gave advance notice of his
resolve to make development his primary agenda during the campaign when he
said he would implement 'Operation Vikas' with the same determination that
helped him pursue 'Operation Vijay' to victory.
So, here's another prediction: the next few years will see bold economic
reforms helping India develop with unprecedented speed. Like Kargil, that
too will be the triumph of the entire nation, and not of any party or
leader. But, as again in Kargil, the leader will make the difference.
(The writer is an aide to Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee)
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Manu
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TIME TO NUKE PAKIS!