The Rediff Special/V C Bhaskaran

Our leaders have exposed themselves to be power hungry pygmies who do not have the courage to face the electorate

Leadership issue not negotiable, screamed the headlines soon after the Congress withdrew support to the Deve Gowda government. This was the United Front's calculated response to Congress president Sitaram Kesri's demand for a change in the UF leadership.

The United Front partners fondly hoped that the inner bickerings in the Congress would force Kesri to change his stand. Even the threat of dissolution of the Lok Sabha did not deter Kesri from executing his plan to oust Deve Gowda as prime minister.

The developments following Deve Gowda's exit now point to a deeper gameplan by the old man in haste. Kesri is turning the tables on the United Front and Deve Gowda, who was made to believe that either he and his partners would swim together or hang together. Kesri's plan seems to be to hang each of the Front partners separately. The first one to go has been Deve Gowda.

From its rigid stand of not permitting any talk of a change in leadership, almost the entire Front has accepted the inevitability of dumping Deve Gowda to save their skins and to enjoy the loaves and fishes of office. All in the name of serving the poor and to uphold what they claim to be secularism.

In this sordid drama, our leaders have exposed themselves to be power hungry pygmies who do not have the courage to face the electorate. The Communists's stand has been particularly reprehensible. The Marxist variety had the cheek to order the Congress about. It looked as though the Congress was destined to back the shuffling game of the United Front with no say in the governance of the country.

That the Communists should take such a stand looked like spitting on the face of evolution of democracy from the negation of the divine right of royalty to the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is indeed an irony of fate that the effulgence of the Magna Carta of 1215 should thin down to an eerie flickering of what one might term as the Magna UF of 1997. Of course, small men do not make history, but only leave some dark stains on its inexorable journey to the yet unknown.

So we have leaders of the same party speaking in different voices. Look at Home Minister Indrajit Gupta who now puts the entire blame for the fall of the UF government at Deve Gowda's door. Gupta now admits that the Congress should have been managed better. But his party does not stand by him. While Indrajit Gupta is ready to part company with his prime minister, not so his party leadership, more so the Marxists who have developed a David and Jonathan kind of inseparableness with each other.

The sole negotiating point between the Congress and the UF and among the UF has been the Front's leadership. In their craze to cling to power at any cost, the UF leaders could not detect the thin end of the Kesri wedge that is now well poised to dismember the United Front into a divided front. Kesri agreed to the resumption of support in the event of the UF electing a new leader. And that is where the mischief lay.

One is reminded of the story of the churning of the ocean for the nectar of life. Kesri has dangled the nectar of immortality in power before the squabbling members of the United Front. Of course, in this power mongering business, there are no devas or asuras, only the asuras of the twentieth century threatening to cast dark shadows on the ensuing century and thus the progress of this great country.

Look at the operative part of Kesri's latest letter to the President. 'The Congress Working Committee resolved to extend support to the formation of a government at the Centre by a new leader of the United Front other than Mr H D Deve Gowda. Otherwise my earlier letter dated March 31, stands,' which is to say that Barkis is willing.

The latest to join the leadership race is Human Resources Development Minister S R Bommai who was the president of the Janata Dal during the May 1996 Lok Sabha poll. Bommai's candidature is the Karnataka Janata Dal MPs's response to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi's support for the candidature of Tamil Maanila Congress chief G K Moopanar. Kannada identity as against Tamil identity to counter both Andhra Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu who would canvas for himself or someone from the north.

After all, Chandrababu Naidu had called Deve Gowda characterless when he locked horns with the prime minister over the Almatti Dam issue. If he could tolerate a characterless man as prime minister, why not a Laloo or a Mulayam?

In the ongoing leadership parleys, individual equations have assumed a dominant role. So the 'consensus' choice of the United Front has to be Congress-friendly, Laloo-friendly, Mulayam-friendly or Bommai-friendly or all rolled into one. While Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi of the Congress is Mulayam-friendly and vice versa, Laloo is Kesri- friendly and Moopanar Congress-friendly on the whole. Deve Gowda and the Left have been left in the lurch.

All these monkey tricks are being played on the people by our politicians of the Congress-UF combine to keep the BJP out and more importantly to ward off a fresh Lok Sabha poll. They are very worried about the 'strains and stresses' of polling and the enormous costs to the exchequer. The only way to stem the rot is for the President to call a fresh election. Let the people decide.

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