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'There's no question of a communist leader as PM'

George Iype in New Delhi

When All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief J Jayalalitha was soliciting support to dethrone Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, an ebullient Laloo Prasad Yadav declared: "We will form the next government in five minutes."

Eight days later, after the Congress, the Left Front and a motley crowd of regional parties fought a bitter struggle for power and failed, the same Laloo Yadav clarified: "We are unable to form the government because we could not do it in five minutes!"

For leaders like him, Jayalalitha, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and Communist Party of India-Marxist general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet, the temptation to exhaust every possible avenue to pull down Vajpayee proved too strong.

And in the end, like the Bharatiya Janata Party, they too came out of the affair hurting all over.

Analysts say the eight days of wrangles, ego clashes and fight for political space between the Congress and regional parties have exposed a divided opposition. "Not only that, it has exposed the pettiness of the Opposition. This political crisis could help the BJP tremendously in the coming poll," Subash Kashyap, political commentator and constitutional expert at the Centre for Policy Research told Rediff On The NeT.

Congress leaders admit that Gandhi -- who showed rare restraint and astuteness in the past one year -- exposed for the first time her political inexperience and weakness for bad counsel. "She stupidly let the whole nation know that she is keen to become the prime minister of India," a senior Congress leader from the South remarked.

According to him, Gandhi's biggest blunder in the past one week was "to aspire for prime ministership without the numbers on our side."

"I sincerely believe Sonia's image has taken a beating for joining hands with Jayalalitha," the Congress leader said. "Our fear is that she is just a crowd-puller and not a mature political leader."

Most Congress leaders now point accusing fingers at Arjun Singh, M L Fotedar, R D Pradhan and Vincent George -- Gandhi's closest aides -- who, they believe, forced her to senselessly undertake a disastrous path when the party was growing well under her.

Ever since Jayalalitha landed in Delhi for the Operation Topple Vajpayee, these four had been whispering such definite political counsel that Gandhi ignored seasoned leaders like Sharad Pawar, Dr Manmohan Singh, A K Antony and P A Sangma.

Opposition leaders, now reflecting on what went wrong with their strategy, aver that if Mulayam Yadav put one roadblock in front of Gandhi's plans, she put two of such for the entire Opposition.

Thus, Gandhi-after bringing down the Vajpayee government in unison with the Opposition remained adamant that the Congress with 140 seats in the Lok Sabha was only interested in forming a minority government.

When she failed to submit before President K R Narayanan the requisite support of 272 MPs, Gandhi announced that she would try hard to prop up an alternative government "as early as possible." But at the same time, she refused to entertain the two options other Opposition groups were interested in: a Third Front-led coalition or a Congress-led coalition.

Sources said when the Opposition groups and Left front were frantically trying to install a Third Front-led government headed by West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, the first one to shoot it down was Gandhi.

"There is no question of supporting a communist leader as prime minister," she is said to have told senior party leaders during an informal CWC meeting at 10, Janpath.

According to Communist Party of India national secretary D Raja, it was not Mulayam Yadav who stalled the new government formation. "We all knew that Mulayam would not agree to a minority Congress government. But we never expected that Gandhi would reject other options. The Congress party lacked courage and consistency after the Vajpayee government fell," he told Rediff On The NeT.

Raja feels the fight between the Opposition parties were not for ideological bargains. "Basically it was a set of ego clashes that were at work," the CPI leader commented.

Thus it seems now that Gandhi repulsed the idea of anyone except herself becoming the prime minister.

Mulayam refused to support a Congress minority government and hated the idea of "foreigner" Gandhi becoming the prime minister even in a coalition. He nurtured the ambition to head any alternative coalition.

Jayalalitha, who was left in the lurch after she withdrew support, told Gandhi that she wanted the Congress president to take over as prime minister. Soon the AIADMK chief switched stand and talked privately to many of appointing Janata Party chief Dr Subramanian Swamy as the prime minister. But then, when the Basu proposal trickled in, she joined hands with Mulayam to root for the first communist to fill the top slot.

Added to the frenzy of squabbling between these top leaders were a number of tiny parties who vetoed each other on all possible equations.

Thus:

The Revolutionary Socialist Party and Forward Bloc consistently opposed a Congress government.

The Bahuajan Samaj Party insisted that it would not participate in any government that includes the Samajwadi Party.

The Tamil Maanila Congress opposed the AIADMK participation in any coalition.

Janata Dal's Ram Vilas Paswan refused to support any alternative where "the corrupt" Laloo Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal is taken in.

"I now feel there was no way any kind of an alternative government could have been formed even if we blindly supported the Congress," SP general secretary Amar Singh told Rediff On The NeT.

According to Singh, "neither the Congress nor the Left parties were sincere and committed to forming a government." "We were consistent from day one that we will not back a Congress government. But we were ready for any other coalition. The Congress and the Left parties should now take the blame for taking the country to polls," the SP leader charged.

Jayalalitha, meanwhile, will fly back to Madras on Tuesday night with her mission unaccomplished.

Gandhi, in the coming days, will struggle to steer the disgruntled and angry Congress MP to a hasty General Election.

And the general public, it will worry itself all the way to the booths whether the forthcoming poll too would result in a fractured mandate with some 40 parties -- many with just one MP -- jostling for power, all seeking a slice of the political pie in the 13th Lok Sabha.

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