09-18-2007, 01:10 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Congress civil war </b>
The Pioneer Edit Desk
From Ram Setu to Kurukshetra
The final days of a coalition are usually a free for all. The experience of the two Janata Party regimes and of the National Front and United Front Governments would bear this out; Cabinet colleagues, particularly those from different caste or socialist factions of the great tumult called cow-belt politics, begin planting stories against each other, calling each other names. It is expected that national parties -- the Congress and the BJP -- are mature enough to keep themselves above such squabbling. Yet, if the past week be anything to go by, the 'Third Front' virus has afflicted the Congress, too. The realisation that the UPA arrangement is close to the finish line and that elections are imminent has resulted in an unseemly positioning game. Suddenly conscious of public standing and the need to appear politically sensitive, <b>Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi have allowed their spin doctors to run a proxy war,</b> claiming credit for the withdrawal of the Archaeological Survey of India's offending affidavit. While a Cabinet meeting chaired by the Prime Minister agreed that the affidavit was out of line and took a decision to revise it, even before the news could reach the Press the publicity machinery at 10 Janpath had appropriated the initiative.
Next, Ms Ambika Soni, the Union Culture Minister -- the ASI is under her charge and she is supposed to have personally vetted the affidavit -- was attacked by her junior colleague, Mr Jairam Ramesh, the Minister of State for Commerce and Industry. Mr Ramesh urged Ms Soni to resign on moral grounds. Ms Soni responded by snubbing her former protégé -- Mr Ramesh has long moved out of Ms Soni's shadow and attempted to carve an independent identity in the Family Loyalty Matrix that is so crucial in the Congress. Following this, Mr RK Dhawan -- once the all-powerful personal assistant to Mrs Indira Gandhi, but now an out-of-work MP -- asked both the Ministers to essentially shut up and pack their bags. Indeed, if the Ram Setu issue is being kept alive in the public sphere, it is substantially due to the internal bickering in the Congress itself.<b> Personal scores are being settled, two rival factions of the Congress president's loyalists are playing out a civil war. Perhaps they are also putting in early bids for key managerial roles in the party's election campaign</b>. <!--emo&
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The drama is likely to end with Ms Soni offering to put in her papers; the Congress seems to have decided that it needs a scapegoat.<b> What is more disquieting is that the ruling party appears to have decided that tokenism and the orchestrated sacking of a single Minister is enough redressal for a sustained policy of insensitivity to mainstream Indian concerns</b>. That aside, the energies and focus of party functionaries and even Ministers seem to be on jockeying for jobs and devising platforms for the coming election rather than on more immediate matters. This leads to a larger point, of course --<b> how long can one sustain a Government that has lost the desire to govern? Rather than go through the charade of talks with the Left, why not simply call it quits and go in for an election now? After all, that is clearly what the Jairam Rameshes and RK Dhawans -- and their hidden manipulators -- are waiting for. </b>
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The Pioneer Edit Desk
From Ram Setu to Kurukshetra
The final days of a coalition are usually a free for all. The experience of the two Janata Party regimes and of the National Front and United Front Governments would bear this out; Cabinet colleagues, particularly those from different caste or socialist factions of the great tumult called cow-belt politics, begin planting stories against each other, calling each other names. It is expected that national parties -- the Congress and the BJP -- are mature enough to keep themselves above such squabbling. Yet, if the past week be anything to go by, the 'Third Front' virus has afflicted the Congress, too. The realisation that the UPA arrangement is close to the finish line and that elections are imminent has resulted in an unseemly positioning game. Suddenly conscious of public standing and the need to appear politically sensitive, <b>Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi have allowed their spin doctors to run a proxy war,</b> claiming credit for the withdrawal of the Archaeological Survey of India's offending affidavit. While a Cabinet meeting chaired by the Prime Minister agreed that the affidavit was out of line and took a decision to revise it, even before the news could reach the Press the publicity machinery at 10 Janpath had appropriated the initiative.
Next, Ms Ambika Soni, the Union Culture Minister -- the ASI is under her charge and she is supposed to have personally vetted the affidavit -- was attacked by her junior colleague, Mr Jairam Ramesh, the Minister of State for Commerce and Industry. Mr Ramesh urged Ms Soni to resign on moral grounds. Ms Soni responded by snubbing her former protégé -- Mr Ramesh has long moved out of Ms Soni's shadow and attempted to carve an independent identity in the Family Loyalty Matrix that is so crucial in the Congress. Following this, Mr RK Dhawan -- once the all-powerful personal assistant to Mrs Indira Gandhi, but now an out-of-work MP -- asked both the Ministers to essentially shut up and pack their bags. Indeed, if the Ram Setu issue is being kept alive in the public sphere, it is substantially due to the internal bickering in the Congress itself.<b> Personal scores are being settled, two rival factions of the Congress president's loyalists are playing out a civil war. Perhaps they are also putting in early bids for key managerial roles in the party's election campaign</b>. <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> The drama is likely to end with Ms Soni offering to put in her papers; the Congress seems to have decided that it needs a scapegoat.<b> What is more disquieting is that the ruling party appears to have decided that tokenism and the orchestrated sacking of a single Minister is enough redressal for a sustained policy of insensitivity to mainstream Indian concerns</b>. That aside, the energies and focus of party functionaries and even Ministers seem to be on jockeying for jobs and devising platforms for the coming election rather than on more immediate matters. This leads to a larger point, of course --<b> how long can one sustain a Government that has lost the desire to govern? Rather than go through the charade of talks with the Left, why not simply call it quits and go in for an election now? After all, that is clearly what the Jairam Rameshes and RK Dhawans -- and their hidden manipulators -- are waiting for. </b>
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