HVK Archives: UF will go to the background
UF will go to the background - The Asian Age
Venkatesh Kesari
()
January 29, 1998
Title: UF will go to the background
Author: Venkatesh Kesari
Publication: The Asian Age
Date: January 29, 1998
Samata Party leader George Fernandes has said that no single
party would be able to come to power after the forthcoming
general elections.
"The mandate of the people in this election will be similar to
the pattern witnessed in 1996, and the BJP and its allies, who
are on the threshold of power will have the requisite strength to
form a government," he told The Asian Age. Similarly, no single
issue would dominate the campaign. "The United Front will go to
the background while Mrs Sonia Gandhi cannot take the Congress to
the power," he said.
The BJP will gain mileage out of the charismatic leadership of
Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the stability plank following the
failure of the Congress and the UF to project a single leader and
to formulate a campaign to attract different sections of society,
Mr Fernandes said.
Neither corruption nor the Ayodhya issue would figure prominently
in the campaigning, he said. The opponents of the BJP, he said,
wanted to keep the Ayodhya issue alive to retain Muslims as vote
banks. "But there is a change in the perception of the Muslims.
The real issues are rising prices, unemployment, farmers'
problem, daily labourers - you cannot sloganise the issues.
People will not be swayed by slogans," he said. Referring to the
role regional parties would play in the future, Mr Fernandes said
such parties would remain wherever they were at present - "in one
Front or the other. They can provide conditional support to
national parties. As we do not have a sovereign federal
structure, the regional parties will have a thin existence.
Because in such a structure, a national party will also learn to
articulate regional aspirations. With today's all powerful
Centre, the regional aspirations are invariably overlooked," he
said.
Asked about his party's election strategy for Bihar, the state
>from where he is expected to gain politically, Mr Fernandes said
development and misrule of the state government would he two
major issues highlighted by the Samata Party. "We want a genuine
debate on various issues that have brought Bihar to this sad
state and to frame a response to the challenge of reconstructing
Bihar," he added Questioned about the radical differences between
the Janata Dal and the Samata Party, if any, Mr Fernandes said
there was a total absence of internal democracy in the Dal and
the party functioned as the "private enterprise of a few people
sitting in Delhi. The Dal has yet to come out of the hangover of
its secular-non-secular slogan. When the election results come,
the Dal will hopefully get rid of this hangover. And that can
open up new possibilities (for the coming together of the SP and
the JD)," he said.
Mr Fernandes hinted that his party may not put up a candidate
against the Dal leader Ram Vilas Paswan in the Hajipur Lok Sabha
scat. "We have not put up a candidate against Mr Paswan and are
considering a proposal to leave that scat for him," he said. The
party has decided to field former CBI director N.K. Singh from
Madhepura. "The RJD president Laloo Prasad Yaday and Dal chief
Sharad Yadav will be contesting the seat. This will be a fight
between good and evil." he said.
Describing the Congress as the "fountainhead of evils such as
corruption, money and muscle power in elections, he said: "The
entire mess you see today is a creation of this party which had
few good persons. The Congress has no future. The party is asking
an Italian, who married an Indian, to lead it.
Mr Fernandes has no plans to join any BJP-. led government unless
the party keeps away from programmes such as the Ayodhya issue,
abrogation of Article 370 of the constitution and uniform civil
code. He was optimistic that the BJP would not take up these
issues.
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