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| No smooth sailing for Congress | | | CP Bhambhri
It’s the benefits that come along with the office that bind parties in power. The UPA’s allies do not seem to show any intention of reconciling local interests with those of the nation
After the results of the general election that saw the Congress winning 206 seats and marked the party’s comeback to power, its allies seemed quite dwarfed against the grand old party. Unfortunately for the Congress, its moment of glory was very short-lived as it was compelled to eat the humble pie by its alliance partners after forming the Government.
A very ugly face of political brinkmanship was seen when DMK chief M Karunanidhi descended in New Delhi with a list of party candidates for ministership in the new Manmohan Singh-led Government. Not only did he decide the number of ministerial posts for his kith and kin but also decided the portfolios that they would get.
It is legitimate for an alliance partner to bargain for a number of ministerial berths in the Cabinet, but the distribution of portfolios to Ministers is the sole prerogative of the Prime Minister in a parliamentary system of Government. But this was not the case. This time it was not Mr Singh calling the shots but Mr Karunanidhi while the Prime Minister was simply asked to put the seal of formal approval on it.
The story does not end here. Union Railway Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, another ally of the Manmohan Singh Government, in her enthusiasm to play the Opposition in West Bengal simply ignores the fact that as a Cabinet Minister she is bound by ‘collective responsibility’ of decisions taken by the Council of Ministers. When the Centre asked the Left Front Government to impose a ban on the Maoists in West Bengal and decided to deploy paramilitary forces, a furious Banerjee came out against the decision and instead asked her party’s Ministers in the Central Government to visit Lalgarh.
Again, when the Centre announced an increase in petroleum prices on July 1, Ms Banerjee was the first Cabinet Minister to flay the decision publicly. One wonders whether Ms Mamata is in the Opposition or in the Government?
By maintaining silence over the recent disclosure by Justice R Raghupathy that a Union Minister had sought to influence him in a case relating to the grant of advance bail to Dr C Krishnamurthy and his son Kiruba Sridhar, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh exhibits the ugly compulsions of coalition politics. This is the worst example of political helplessness.
The above happenings raise some fundamental questions about the functioning of coalition Governments in general and the present Congress Government in particular.
Gone are the days when political parties lent support to the party forming the Government considering some essential commonality. Today it is the benefits that come along with the office and not the ideological commonality that brings parties to form the Government.
The emergence of coalition politics has provided oxygen to small regional political parties who, with a limited support base from a specific region, have come to the centrestage of politics without any sense of national responsibility. Regionalists have not outgrown their localism and sense of parochialism.
It will be premature to suggest that the coalition Government at the Centre will have a smooth ride ahead because the its regional allies do not seem to show any intention to reconcile local interests with those of national.
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