Commentary/Saisuresh Sivaswamy

It's eyeball to eyeball, and someone's got to blink

Fortyeight hours after he decided to withdraw his party's support to the United Front government and stake its claim to form the next government, All India Congress Committee president Sitaram Kesri has not told the nation how exactly he intends to go about finding the more than hundred members of Parliament needed to shore up his claim.

For that matter, the UF, whose constituents have wasted little time in proclaiming their unity, and determination to face the trial of strength on the floor of the Lok Sabha, has not taken the nation into confidence either about how it will survive now that the rug has been pulled out from under its feet rather suddenly.

In other words, this is eyeball to eyeball in the corridors of power, something we have not witnessed even in modern Indian political history.

Things were not the same the last two times the Congress decided to spoil someone's party. In 1979, when Indira Gandhi let down Prime Minister Charan Singh he was not left with even the will to face a trust vote in the Lok Sabha. And again, 11 years later, anticipating her son would do to him what the mother did to his colleague, Chandra Shekhar became the first prime minister to resign in the Lok Sabha.

It is ironical that the man who is giving the UF strength even as he himself is lying in hospital bed is the former Prime Minister V P Singh, the man who will ever be remembered as the only PM to have been defeated on the floor of the house (the BJP, it must be remembered, resigned last year before the trust vote could be put to test). By all indications available now, Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda looks well set to emulate V P Singh when the house reconvenes on April 11.

But what gives the two sides the confidence that the forces are with it and not the other? The Congress, of course, is well within its rights to back out of the tenuous arrangement it entered into with the UF less than a year ago. Similarly, the UF was merely insisting on its constitutional right when it sought a trust vote -- apart from the fact that this will buy it valuable time to test the waters -- and not resign like Charan Singh did 18 years ago.

The only way the UF can survive in office is by breaking the Congress party, and that is stating the obvious. Out of the strength of 143 enjoyed by the Congress and its allies, the UF needs a whopping 92 to come out in its support in order to survive in office. And, it is again stating the obvious that no Trojan horse in the Congress -- be it Sharad Pawar, P V Narasimha Rao or K Karunakaran -- enjoys the support of so many MPs. Forget 92, no one can muster the support of one-third of the Congress Parliamentary Party, the least needed to effect a split. And Kesri gambled on this when he unilaterally decided to pull out from backing the government.

Assuming that 92 Congress members do walk over to the other camp, it will not be for the pleasure of seeing Gowda and his team continue in office. Anyone who plays Pied Piper to this large posse of politicians will have a price, which can only be the prime ministership if it is someone like Pawar or Rao. And this is a price that the UF cannot afford to pay. So stalemate on the Congress breaking up.

Likewise, the only way Kesri can live up to his claim of having the numbers behind him -- when his party is short of the magical number by a good 134--is to wean away large chunks from the United Front. With the Left Front expressing itself against supporting the Congress claim, the only way Kesri can establish his majority will be by engineering abstentions on the day of the vote. Kesri knows too that if Sharma invites his party to form the next government, it will be conferring legitimacy on an illegitimate government, a parliamentary infraction that nothing in Sharma's record shows him capable of.

Ergo, his party will once again be supporting a new formation of political parties, but this time with a difference: the Congress will be a dominant partner in this arrangement, and will participate in the government from inside. Thus, while the prime ministership may not be with it, it will ensure that the deputy prime ministership goes to it, as do plum posts in the Union cabinet.

It is also clear that Kesri, when he took the irrevocable step on March 30, just two days before All Fools Day, also served notice on the nation to be prepared for a midterm poll. If polls seemed possible a year ago when the Congress decided to back the UF, it is a cinch now. For no arrangement that comes into force in New Delhi can last till 2000 AD, when polls are actually due. And it is equally obvious that unless the Congress and the UF close ranks and not let the present affect their future ties, it will be the Bharatiya Janata Party that will be encashing political IOUs at its vote bank as and when the polls are held. Ironical, because keeping the BJP out was the Congress-UF's themesong.

Whatever be the outcome, 11 days before the crucial vote is taken in the Lok Sabha, Deve Gowda's government is on a respirator. Kesri cannot back out from the combative position he has taken up, the BJP is happy to let the farce unfold, and the PM is reduced to making statements of bravado.

In ancient stagecraft, whenever such a stalemate arose, playwrights resorted to deux ex machina, a mechanical contraption that would descend on the stage to conclude the narrative. Perhaps, as the one who has scripted this political drama unfolding in the capital, Sitaram Kesri has a deux ex machina in mind to save his play.

Wonder, though, if it will be the inhabitant of 10 Janpath?

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