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The BJP's secret weapon

Sometimes it appears to me as if Sonia Gandhi is the BJP's secret weapon. Its biggest strength.

Just when things get tough for the ruling party, just when you think they are going to find themselves in deep, neck-deep trouble, Sonia emerges from nowhere as a guardian angel. To save them from what looks like almost certain disaster.

Look at the facts. Just when the Congress managed to get its act together and threw the gauntlet at the BJP-led government riven by huge internal dissensions, it was her infamous arithmetic (remember "tu seventy tu" outside Rashtrapati Bhavan?) that threw her party's game plan into disarray and showed her up for what she was: desperate to grab power even if it meant cheating on numbers. The result was predictable. She lost out on forming an alternative Congress-led government.

After that, it has been one steady decline.

The squabble with Sharad Pawar and Purno Sangma split the party just when it was about to consolidate. The moment she announced her name as a candidate for the prime minister's job, it was clear to even the most thick-headed Indian that the Congress was writing off all its chances in an election it could have actually won. The alliance with Jayalalitha was a sure kiss of death while the deal with Laloo Prasad was her way of inviting every scamster, every crook, to join hands with the Congress and further alienate it from the electorate.

It was only natural that she lost. Every journalist anticipated it. Every pollster predicted it. Every research agency showed that she was presiding over a losing combination. But she kept at it, relentlessly. Refusing to read the writing on the wall. Making a faux pas a day. If it were not for the BJP's own foibles and follies, particularly in UP, Maharashtra and Karnataka, Atal Bihari Vajpayee would have won even more handsomely.

But the Congress did not learn. Instead of changing its leader or finding her some sensible aides brave enough to speak the truth in her presence, they did just the opposite. They ignored the debacle and kept trying to prove that their votes had actually increased in the last election because of Sonia's barnstorming campaign.

Kapil Sibal quit his job as Congress spokesman after assuring the nation day after day in every political debate, every TV show, that the Congress was returning to power with a massive margin, inspired by Sonia's incandescent leadership. When his party got hammered out of shape, he did not once concede defeat, he did not once blame his leader for leading her flock headlong into mass suicide simply because she was too greedy to give up her demand for the prime minister's job and too arrogant to accept decent partners in alliance. Instead, he kept proffering absurd excuses and unsustainable statistics to prove just the opposite. That, were it not for Sonia, the Congress would have done infinitely worse.

How could the Congress have done worse than what it did? It got an all-time low in terms of seats and in its traditional heartland of UP and Bihar was totally routed. Its allies did almost as badly and the people of India openly heaped scorn at the very idea of an Italian-born prime minister ruling the country. Sonia herself of course knew that she had no hope in hell to lead the party to victory and that is why, to ensure that she was not crushed herself, after having chosen to fight from the safest seat in the land, the Gandhi family pocket borough of Amethi, she sneaked away in the midst of her campaign to file a second set of papers in the second safest seat she could lay her hands on, Bellary.

She clearly lacked self-confidence. If nothing else, it was this that did her in. No one votes for a party whose supreme leader and self-declared prime ministerial candidate is not even confident of winning her own seat in Parliament. That too from her pocket borough. That is why they decided to teach her a lesson. Not only did they vote so heavily against her that she barely won by a whisker, but they also ensured that her stepney candidate for the prime minister's job also lost even though (as everyone knows) Manmohan Singh is a much respected man. If he were not seen as Sonia's choice, he would have almost certainly been elected.

That apart, she was even graceless in defeat. Leaders acknowledge failure and take the responsibility on their own shoulders. It is the decent thing to do. But Sonia chose to appoint a top-level Congress committee to assess the reasons for the party's debacle as if these were not apparent to even her blindest acolytes. The committee spent months to find out (surprise, surprise) that everyone and everything else was responsible for the defeat of the Congress except hamari Sonia. That is why we saw on TV the other day the usual gang of khadiwallahs touching her feet and handing over to her (amidst much pomp and ceremony) its huge, voluminous findings that attempt to prove that Sonia would have single-handedly won the election against Vajpayee were it not for the failures of her party and her partymen.

In other words, the Congress party has discovered after so much research and soul-searching that its only problem is itself. Not Sonia. That Sonia is a sure winner. It is the party that is a loser.

As one of the world's finest democracies in operation, India does not only deserve a strong, stable government. It also deserves a strong, stable Opposition led by strong, stable people. Sonia Gandhi is, unfortunately, not one of them and yet she has managed, by the inherent strength of the Congress, to foist herself on the country as leader of the Opposition. Given her breathtaking record of follies, this can only further consolidate the BJP government and drive the Opposition into the ground.

This would be sad. We are, for the first time, moving towards a two-party system, where two political alliances are confronting each other as the two stable options before India. Even the Communists are ready to support the Congress while the Janata Dal, a long term ally of the Communists and the Congress, has split itself to openly align with the BJP. The regional parties have also taken their positions unequivocally. With the Telugu Desam, the Shiv Sena, the DMK, the Trinamool Congress, the Samata, the National Conference and the Akalis firmly behind the BJP and the CPI-M, the RJD, the AIADMK and others rooting openly for the alternative.

In Vajpayee, the BJP-led alliance has found a strong, reliable, visionary leader.

If Indian democracy has to grow and flourish, the Opposition also needs a leader of similar status. Sonia cannot, will not, do. She will only make the BJP stronger and the Opposition weaker and weaker. There is Bofors. There is HDW. There is her own unceasing greed for power that has already weakened the party she heads. The longer she stays as leader of the Opposition, the more she will weaken it. The more difficult it will be for them to be taken seriously as an alternative to the Vajpayee government.

Pritish Nandy

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