Author: Editorial
Publication: The Free Press Journal
Date: March 30, 2006
URL: http://www.samachar.com/features/300306-editorial.html
Self-flagellation is still considered an easy
route to martyrdom among certain African tribes. Whether it will keep up the
tempo in Rae Bareli is doubtful. Sonia Gandhi has no doubt learnt a lot from
Indira Gandhi's grand-standing posture. But Indira Gandhi also knew to adjust
it to the changing audiences, views and political climate.
Whether Sonia Gandhi has come that far in
manipulating crowd psychology is a moot point. She has gone to her constituency
to seek re-election which, in the absence of any unforeseen accidents, will
come through. So it is no use posing as a martyr or enemy no. 1 of the opposition
or being targeted by one and all in parliament and outside in order to seek
the protection of her constituency. It sounds like furious anger against all
those who misled her to resign.
Even on Thursday last, her minister of parliamentary
affairs could have contacted all the opposition leaders and come to a workable
MoU, as he has done now. Where Sonia overstepped her limits of power and prestige
is when she hustled people (or agreed with her claque) to get ready with an
ordinance. And the proroguing of Parliament is one of the costliest blunders
that she can commit.
Which clearly shows that she can do anything
with Parliament and get away with it. It is astonishing that not a single
flatterer at 10 Janpath saw the utter unparliamentary nature of the ordinance.
Their presumption that a President like Abdul Kalam would sign on the dotted
line is outrageous.
Now even some members of the Congress think-tank
feel that the National Advisory Council is superfluous. It merely served to
foist Sonia Gandhi over the Prime Minister. Supreme power without any responsibility.
Where were all her pangs of morality when she or her advisers sent the law
minister's men to defreeze Ottavio Quattrocchi's bank account in London?
How did she react to the Volcker report? Why
did she hold a watching brief to install her son as the de facto successor
to her at the Hyderabad AICC? What happens to more bright young MPs who have
done something for the country?
Does Sonia know anything about the unseating
of Jaya Bachchan, the ramifications of which are swirling the Congress? Moral
indignation is not a one-way street. Nor moral challenge. Let her know that
nobody is targeting her exclusively. It is all part of the rough and tumble
of politics. Some you win. Some you lose. Sonia Gandhi should learn to take
the rough with the smooth in her stride.
However, if she thinks that her antics in
Rae Bareli would change Congress fortunes in UP, she is mistaken. A clear
indication of this emerged from the kind of people who were seated with her
on the platform.
