Author:
Publication: The Economic
Times
Date: December 14, 2000
The leader of the Opposition,
Sonia Gandhi's continuing silence in Parliament during the Ayodhya debate
on Wednesday highlighted yet again the Congress party's persistent crisis
of leadership.
If opposition parties
expected Congress to he the vanguard of attack against the government on
an issue as sensitive and
Politically volatile
as Ayodhya, they were doomed to disappointment as Ms Gandhi spent the entire
day in an almost inert position, moving only to nervously adjust the folds
of her perfectly pleated saree.
This left the Congress
attack confined to new recrucits like S Jaipal Reddy, raising eyebrows
that the Congress which had inspired the week-long protest could not field
senior leaders for the debate.
MS Gandhi has continually
demonstrated her complete failure to grasp the details of Indian politics,
from failing to stand up during the National Anthem on Navy Day to letting
a parliamentary debate go by without intervention or any discernible political
directive.
The most savage attack
against her was reserved for Mulayam Singh Yadav, the Samajwadi Party leader.
Rising to attack the government in Lok Sabha on Wednesday afternoon, Mr
Yadav instead trained his guns on the Congress party and specifically Ms
Gandhi for failing to have provide any leadership.
Turning to Jaipal Reddy,
he said Mr Reddy was 'an outsider,' since he had only recently joined the
party, having spent many politically active years outside the congress
party, opposing their policies. Yet today, the Congress party was
in such a parlous state as to requisition the services of an 'outsider'
to defend their point of view. "You were the spokesman of our group,'
Mr Yadav reminded Mr Reddy, "and you can return whenever you want."
Mr Reddy's current political
convictions was singled out for special treatment even by the Union law
minister Arun Jaitley, who rose to oppose the motion for the government.
'I have admired his (Mr
Reddy's) choice of words but never his choice of party. I naive admired
his turn of phrase but never the turn of his ideologies,' he said.
Mr Jaitley further said,
"I remember his eloquent opposition of the emergency. He articulated
the need for probity in public life much better than any of us in the Bofors
case. He has articulated the merits of democracy against dynasty.
And today, he denounced conversions and reconversions. When the master
of re-conversion denounces conversion, all I can say to Shri Jaipal Reddy
is, et tu Brut....
Today by a complete somersault
of what Shri Jaipal Reddy said in '92, he has shown an infinite capacity
to re-invent himself.,
The Congress found itself
defenceless against the barrage of criticism directed against it by Mr
Yadav and Mr Jaitley.
