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Sonia's fading charisma adds to Congress woes

George Iype in New Delhi

As political parties ready to fight the Lok Sabha election barely 45 days away, Congressmen are worried that Sonia Gandhi is losing her mass appeal, which could lead to their defeat.

Since the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government was voted out of power in April, Gandhi has rarely taken any concrete steps to gear the party up for polls. The results: bitter infighting in many state units, total disarray as regards to regional tie-ups, and the Congress is still searching for an election issue.

Leaders feel the party is in a mess mainly because the confidence and charisma in Gandhi's leadership, that was visible during the 1998 Lok Sabha poll, are missing now. "Last year, our state unit presidents used to plead before Soniaji inviting her for election campaigning. But this year no one is particularly pressing for her to campaign. There is little enthusiasm from the state units," a functionary in the Congress election cell told rediff.com.

"We fear Soniaji has lost her charm as a star campaigner. It seems her charisma is fading," he added.

Leaders like him feel that in the past three months, Gandhi committed at least three grave mistakes that robbed Congressmen's enthusiasm.

First, after the collapse of the Vajpayee government, Gandhi, despite frantically holding parleys with opposition groups and own leaders, failed to form an alternative government.

Second, Gandhi kept out Sharad Pawar -- the number two leader in the party -- from her inner circle, forcing the Maharashtra leader to walk out and form the Nationalist Congress Party. Congress circles believe losing Pawar has been a big blow, especially in a crucial state like Maharashtra.

Third, many Congress leaders feel Gandhi failed to manage the party affairs in the wake of the Kargil conflict. Her public address in Lucknow last week, where she stated that thousands of brave soldiers were murdered in Kargil because of the government's blunders, elicited little response from the audience.

Though the Congress president deployed Natwar Singh, the party's foreign affairs chairperson to handle Kargil, many feel he made a mess of the crisis as he daily picked holes in Vajpayee's foreign policy when in fact the government was riding a diplomatic victory.

"We always thought Soniaji will retain the Gandhi charisma. But she is losing out, maybe because she is not an experienced political player," a former Congress member of Parliament remarked.

Congress leaders like him feel Gandhi's over-dependence on her coterie has eroded her credibility.

One senior Congress leader from the South pointed out that the All India Congress Committee session convened in May to compel Gandhi to take back her resignation had specifically demanded an end to the practice of the Congress president listening to only a handful of trusted lieutenants. But despite this, Gandhi continues to depend heavily on people like Arjun Singh, Natwar Singh, M L Fotedar and R D Pradhan.

Moreover, she has been unable to stop sniping among leaders, especially with younger ones like Rajesh Pilot, Madhavrao Scindia, Kamal Nath and Ahmed Patel, all of whom are jostling to enter Gandhi's close circuit.

"It may be true that she has exposed her inexperience in politics. But we have no other leader whom we can bank on during election. Therefore, our attempt is to present Soniaji as the prime ministerial candidate," another Congress leader said.

According to him, the Congress's biggest challenge now is not to win the election but retain the 141 seats that it held in the dissolved Lok Sabha. Party strategists are unhappy with the little progress that Gandhi has made in crucial states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which together contribute 139 seats in the Lok Sabha.

To regenerate the Sonia hype and to take on the BJP's prime ministerial candidate Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Congress strategists are now giving final touches to an aggressive campaign by Gandhi across the country.

Sources said Gandhi's biggest challenge now is to convert the Kargil conflict to the Congress's advantage by exposing the Vajpayee government's lapses and blunders.

Congress leaders are also planning to demand an apology from the BJP for its campaign against the party on the Bofors gun deal. For, it was the Swedish gun that served the army well in Operation Vijay, and the Vajpayee government is now ordering fresh stocks of ammunition from AB Bofors.

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