While Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh may have shown his determination to go ahead with the FDI last year and in the process, bring in two members of his “Chandigarh Club” Mr Ashwini Kumar and Pawan Bansal in his team as cabinet Ministers, it was Congress President Sonia Gandhi who showed everyone that She still commands and has her way. This proved yet again that while Prime Minister may have the responsibility but no power, and Congress President continues to wield power but not the responsibility.
The Congress President’s decisive blow against Bansal and Kumar shows where the real power lies and ends the charade. The pretense that she and the PM were playing a tuneful jugalbandi now has to be modified, if not abandoned. At the end, it is the Prime Minister who gave the impression of being strong and independent in his actions and approach, had to eat and humble pie and follow the diktat of the party President.
A senior commentator wrote “The fact that Sonia Gandhi always made a public show of deference to the Prime Minister was misread by many as genuine respect for the latter’s capabilities. It is possible that even Dr Singh misread her intentions – which were buttressed by Sonia Gandhi’s decision to back him in 2008 when he unilaterally put the government in jeopardy by pushing the Left out on the Indo-US nuclear deal.”
But if UPA-1 was the time when Sonia had to like-or-lump Manmohan Singh’s rare display of independence on inconsequential issue, in UPA-2 it was entirely the other way round, when a grateful Singh played Loyal Retainer to his boss. This time he was content to occupy the PM’s chair, never mind what his title said was his job.
Looking back, was the Prime Minister being too adamant and rigid when it came to saving two members of his ‘Chandigarh Club” ? Or he just confused loyalty with craven behavior. Or, he placed loyalty to an individual above loyalty to his job and the institutions that uphold our democracy.
That explains why both Pawan Bansal and Ashwani Kumar, both hand-picked nominees of Manmohan Singh, had to go. With corruption and lack of governance becoming dominant themes in Indian elections—as Karnataka demonstrated recently—both ministers had become liabilities for the Congress President and her new-found love for probity. It didn’t matter that both were Singh appointees, and at least one of them—the law Minister—had gone out on a limb to protect his boss in the Coalgate affair by lying to the Supreme Court and helping doctor the CBI’s status report on its investigations. Not only that, since officials from the PMO were involved in the doctoring, the needle of suspicion points directly at Singh himself.
Perhaps the Prime Minister’s egregious error was that he confused his own loyalty to Sonia Gandhi as protection enough for all his indiscretions. He believed that in winking at corruption—whether it was 2G, Coalgate or Commonwealth Games—he was doing her a favor. In other words, Manmohan Singh has been caught trying to protect himself not because he was an innocent bystander, but because he was probably “complicit” in some people’s misdeeds either in the belief that Mrs Gandhi will stand by him or that she actually wanted him to wink at such deeds.
The Prime Minister also forgot the second law of political morality which says that “loyalty goes only one way, upwards to the boss and is never downwards to the loyals. By trying to protect Kumar and Bansal, Manmohan Singh made the Congress’ party’s political position untenable. The opposition ruckus that prevented Parliament from discussing or passing the Food Security Bill—which Mrs Gandhi believes is her ticket to the next election victory—was probably the last straw and it was when she probably decided that Singh was no longer good at protecting her interests.
That also explains the fact that whether Manmohan Singh stays or goes before the next elections, the relationship with Sonia has probably undergone a change and it would not remain the same again. The Prime Minister’s dithering and inability to take a decision on his tainted colleagues has only made his position weaker in the eyes of the party president and he may not be allowed to have much leeway in future on such sensitive issues.
In addition, the prime Minister’s term as Member of Parliament (MP) expires on 14 June. The elections for the two Rajya Sabha seats in Assam, including one vacated by him will be held on 30 May. Though it would just be a formality, Singh has to file his nominations for re-election from Assam to Rajya Sabha by 20 May. On the other hand, the opposition is now training its guns at the Prime Minister with renewed vigour. Whether the Congress President would have a second thought on the continuation of Dr Singh as the prime Minister till next parliament elections is another matter.
In any case, the budget session of Parliament was becoming disastrous for the ruling party and the Coalgate and 2G scam became a huge headache for the Congress as the opposition parties did not allow the House to function on most of the days. Even as the position of both Pawan Bansal and Ashwini kumar started becoming untenable, a section of Congress leaders firmly believed that even if the party had to sack one or both of these ministers it should not be seen as doing it under pressure from the BJP. The Congress wanted to take a moral position that it sacrificed its two important ministers to take the high ground on public probity.
The Congress party waited for the outcome of Karnataka verdict which came in its favor and that prompted the leadership to crack the whip as it would help a great deal in projecting the Congress President as the savior, no matter what it did for Manmohan Singh. To that extent, the Congress party has been successful. However, it remains to be seen if there are more skeletons tumbling from the cupboard and the Congress President musters up courage to shunt out a few rogue elements from within whose acts have brought in embarrassment to the overall image and credibility of the party. (Posted on May 13, 2013 @ 8.00am)
(Ajay Jha is a Commentator and Independent Writer and Analyst on Politics, security and Economy of South And West Asia. His email id is: Ajay N Jha <ajayjha30@gmail.com>)
