Who'll Blink?

DESPITE the snub administered by the Samajwadi Party (SP) on April 23, the Congress effort to make the numbers for Sonia Gandhi continued at a frenetic pace over the weekend. But even with muddled signals of a climbdown from the SP, party managers were left with only a faint glimmer of hope. Late on Saturday, J. Jayalalitha dimmed it further with a last-gasp blow, plumping for a third front regime led by Jyoti Basu with outside support from the Congress. Impatient with the lack of progress in the Congress manoeuvres, she firmly ruled out both a minority government or a coalition headed by it. Even before that, it was a peril-ridden sally towards power. On Saturday, SP spokesman Amar Singh was quoted by a news agency saying his party didn’t rule out conditional support to the Congress. A little over an hour later, he denied having made any such statement and was back to condemning the Congress.

The hardened stand of the SP is open to twin interpretations. First, that under pressure from the Left and his constituency Mulayam may back the Congress, in return for a substantial pound of flesh and will roll out a list of conditions, mostly UP specific. Others reckon it is more of a tactical ploy to push the stakes to a point where the Congress cannot agree and thereby throw open a third front alternative—led preferably by Jyoti Basu. The worst-case scenario would be, of course, elections unless the bjp is allowed to throw its hat in the ring once again.

April 24 saw hectic activity in the Opposition camp—mostly concentrated around attempts to make Mulayam Singh Yadav come around to support a minority Congress regime. cpm general secretary H.K.S. Surjeet spent nearly two hours with the SP leader, while Jayalalitha flitted to and fro, from a meeting with Mulayam to Rashtrapati Bhavan and then on to a tete-a-tete with Jyoti Basu. Sharad Pawar was also slated to meet Mulayam.

The desperation showed through. A senior Congressman told Outlook that despite the exception his party leadership has taken to the intemperate language used by SP leaders while attacking the Congress, the doors were still open. A new set of negotiators have been entrusted with working out a deal with Mulayam—the team is headed by a Rajya Sabha member and a leading Supreme Court lawyer. But regardless of whether Sonia manages to scramble through or fails in this last-ditch effort, the party image is bound take a sound beating. It was all hunky-dory when the Opposition, with the Congress in the lead, brought down the Vajpayee government. But the effort to drum up the numbers for an alternative government was marked by a string of failures. And should the Congress fail to cobble together some formation or the other then it will be hard-pressed to explain to the electorate why a government was wantonly pulled down.

Either way, Sonia will have to face a personalised version of the strident "swadeshi versus videshi" campaign which will only gather steam in the days to come. Over the past fortnight the Congress president has become, at least among the urban middle class, probably the most distrusted political leader after Jayalalitha. This erosion of Sonia’s image has taken place because she came forward prematurely and seemed to be directly involved in a sordid political game from which she would emerge as a loser even if she won.

When the rsp, the Forward Bloc and the SP decided not to support a Congress minority government last week, Congressmen lost all but a thin thread of hope, but the official party line was that it would pull through."We will prove our majority on the floor of Parliament," said party spokesman Ajit Jogi.

Indeed, on April 24, after a meeting with party MPs, the Congress was still working towards forming a minority government. Only four MPs felt that the party should consider other options. The party stand continued to be that Sonia will be invited by the President, since the Congress is the second largest party, and asked to prove her strength in Parliament. And all efforts and negotiations were to be aimed towards achieving that outcome.

But the Congress story, even if it ends with a face-saver for the party, has been a tale of poor judgement and political miscalculation. It was on the advice of Congress Working Committee (cwc) member Arjun Singh and cpi(m) general secretary H.K.S. Surjeet that Sonia claimed majority support for a Congress-led minority government. Congressmen concede that Sonia had played her cards a shade too soon. This is why many party leaders will find it hard to forgive Surjeet for having egged her on without first having assured himself of support from the smaller parties comprising the erstwhile third front, as well as his own partners in the Left Front.

While Congressmen didn’t quite have the courage to point fingers at Sonia, their ire against the troika of Arjun Singh, M.L. Fotedar and R.D. Pradhan, seen as the prime movers in the messy toppling exercise, was profound. "In their desperation to run a khadao (sandal) sarkar, they have demolished whatever gains the Congress had made in the last one year," said a senior cwc member.

As failure loomed large on April 23, when Sonia went to the President with letters of support from just 233 MPs, Congressmen were united on one thing: their anger against Arjun Singh. He had not only got himself appointed official spokesperson but had decided to personally deal with the rlm to ensure their support to Sonia—and failed. Pawar, who had successfully negotiated with the rlm until the ouster of the bjp, was sidelined. Party sources said Fotedar had dismissed the upcc’s objections to including the SP in a coalition on the grounds that it was "nowhere" in the state in any case.

The contentious issue of power-sharing, although it had been discussed behind closed doors, had not been sorted out before the vote of confidence. Surjeet had maintained right from the beginning that the Left Front and its friends would offer outside support to the Congress, but the view of the smaller parties was that they would be risking their very survival in such an arrangement. A senior Janata Dal leader had strongly advised the rlm to insist on a coalition.

But the Congress maintained that it had taken a "policy decision" to run a minority government, based on the fact that there were too many contradictions within its allies to permit any other arrangement. "Where is the question of a coalition or a third front alternative? These people are too busy attacking each other—the SP and bsp, the tmc and the aiadmk, the Janata Dal and the rjd," pointed out a Congress MP.

The perceived arrogance of the Congress in going ahead with its announcement of a minority government is what had set Mulayam Singh’s back up. But the real reasons were his compulsions in UP. He had expressed his reservations on supporting the Congress in a one-to-one meeting with Sonia but clearly, she had not taken him seriously. Like Surjeet, she had taken him for granted. Stung to the quick by the casual attitude, Mulayam Singh made his ire plain before the media. But Sonia failed to take the hint and party spokesman Arjun Singh categorically ruled out any climbdown on the part of the Congress.

Following Mulayam Singh’s letter to the President dubbing both Congress and bjp as unacceptable, a section of Congress leaders felt that the ball should be thrown right back in his court. "If they want to form a government, let them go ahead and try. It simply won’t work," said an MP.

In this strong anti-Congress mood, it was the SP that first sought to prop up Basu as a compromise candidate for prime minister. SP general secretary Amar Singh took the initiative to cobble together a third front alternative. He called a meeting of the Left Front, aiadmk, rlm and Janata Dal in an effort to work out a joint strategy. The objective was two-fold: to stop the Sonia juggernaut and float the idea of a third front government with outside support from the Congress.

While both Chandra Shekhar and SP general secretary Amar Singh refused to place on record their objections to Sonia, their message was all too clear. "If the Congress thinks she is the only capable person and senior people like Sharad Pawar and Manmohan Singh are not capable, that is up to the Congress," said Amar Singh. An index of his pique was the fact that, following the meeting of non-Congress "secular" parties, he refused to call on Sonia at 10, Janpath and inform her of the deliberations. Some in the Congress like Pawar feel that elections are now the most likely scenario. "We are ready, whether in June or November, whenever the Election Commission decides," he said. As to how many seats the party could reasonably expect, no one is hazarding any wild guesses.

Whatever the last-minute deal—if there is one—that can be worked out by an Opposition which was very gung-ho after it brought down the Vajpayee government, Sonia’s dilemma is there for all to see. If she somehow manages to scrape through, the cost will be huge; not only Mulayam, but other allies are likely to make their own set of demands. And if a third front government is the only face-saver for Sonia, then her own MPs are unlikely to be overjoyed. Sonia is probably realising how Vajpayee has felt for 13 months. But what the Opposition fears most is a President left with no choice but to recall Vajpayee or dissolve the Lok Sabha. A denouement they will do everything to prevent.