LET us stop beating the pathetic Sitaram Kesri. He is not the only villain in the sordid drama that has been played out in the last week—one which has left hapless citizens lumbered with another general election. What about the grey eminences in the United Front determined to stand "rock solid" behind the DMK? Didn't they have any role to play in their own demise? Are they entirely blameless?
On Wednesday and Thursday last week, as the Congress party realised it had gone too far, Kesri sent a second letter to I.K. Gujral, literally pleading for reconsideration. Sonia Gandhi, too, through whatever mysterious lines of communication she uses to chastise her partymen, let it be known that she was against destabilising the government. Coupled with this went another message: the lady was not for electioneering, she would not run around the country campaigning for the Congress. Collective bravado quickly turned to collective funk.
More signals of funk. On Wednesday and Thursday the most vocal hawks—Arjun Singh, Vijayabhaskara Reddy, Jitendra Prasada—fell swiftly and suddenly silent. Their phones were off the hook and their zest for punishing those who had allegedly aided and abetted Rajiv's killers seemed to have dimmed considerably. Kesri appeared once again the supreme leader of his party, with both the hawks and the doves pursuing a common agenda namely, the avoiding of elections.
What the Congress party desperately required at that time was a crumb, some face-saver, a gesture from the United Front which went beyond a JPC and a committee of jurists to examine the Jain report. Privately, Kesri communicated as much to Gujral: strengthen my hands, he said, we are both on the same side, give me something, anything, on the DMK.
I understand various suggestions were forwarded. One of the three DMK ministers could resign for a brief period. If Murasoli Maran was too senior to be sacrificed, how about the junior-most minister? The Congress leader was on his knees and, according to sources close to 7, Race Course Road, Gujral was keen to accommodate the request from the "old man not in a hurry".
Alas, in the United Front there was a triumphalist mood—the Congress had been taught a lesson. "We are not in the business of saving anyone's face," noted UF luminaries pompously. The foolish expectation that the Congress leadership would capitulate, surrender without any conditions, persisted.
It didn't. It couldn't. Finally, the United Front drove the Congress into a situation where it had no option but to withdraw support. No one was asking Gujral and his core committee to abandon their south Indian ally. But surely a construction of words and sentences could have been formulated which allowed the United Front to offer a minute amount of satisfaction to the Congress on the critical issue without seeming to impeach the redoubtable Karunanidhi. If the situation had been put to the DMK leader, who was equally keen to avoid elections, he could have been persuaded to agree.
True, the Gujral government succeeded magnificently in demonstrating 'solidarity' with an unfairly accused coalition partner, but in the process it committed suicide. Someone should have reminded Chandrababu Naidu that life is better than death.
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