Partisanship tp the fore - The Observer

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Gujarat assembly has been suspended. And along with it
democracy. No party, including the Centre, is free from
the taint of having derailed democracy in the reckless
pursuit of partisan interests. It was deputy speaker
Chandubhai Dabhi who first inaugurated the train of
contempt for the established rules of the game by arbi-
trarily disallowing the Suresh Mehta government to take
the vote of confidence on September 3, to the standing
ovation from the opposition ranks. The state governor,
too, made it clear as to where his sympathy lay by fail-
ing to create conditions for a fair trial of strength.

Driven to the wall, the ruling BJP has now returned the
compliment, albeit in the reverse direction. It got Mr
Daulatbhai Desai, first in the panel of presiding offic-
ers, to conduct proceedings on Wednesday (in the absence
of the deputy speaker) to take up the vote of confidence
by preponing it by a day and winning it by a headcount of
93 against nil. But not before the House was thrown into
bedlam by legislators taking to physical force to settle
the issue.

The governor has chosen to treat Wednesday's unedifying
episode as a symptom of breakdown of the "constitutional
machinery" - a concern that was not quite in evidence
during the fortnight-long crisis in the state. And the
United Front- government has jumped at the opportunity to
use the governor's report as a handle to dismiss the
Suresh Mehta government, notwithstanding their commitment
to the contrary.

Obviously, honour and fair play was at a discount when
the prize was destabilising the government of its foe.
Additionally, the move smacks of an attempt to demoralise
the BJP and paint the party as one incapable of running a
government despite the two-thirds mandate that the people
of Gujarat had given it. If the gameplan works, the UF
reckons that it stands to either gain power or deny it to
the BJP in Uttar Pradesh where elections are barely a
fortnight away. It is in the nature of gamesmanship to
discount a bitter harvest. Not because it is unlikely
but because its practitioners rarely give the people the
credit for seeing through their double standards or its
victims the resilience to turn defeat into victory.

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