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Saisuresh Sivaswamy

There is no putting off the elections anymore

Justice Jain is perhaps no Solomon, but that does not disqualify his efforts at finding the truth behind the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. His needle of suspicion has pointed to the lack of sincerity on the part of the then central and state governments in guarding the life of a high-risk individual. Naturally, being a judge, he has not taken into account the effect his jottings would have on the fragile arrangement between the United Front and the Congress party.

And the apoplexy that the latter has gone into ever since the report has been devouring newsprint, makes it obvious that this is the last act of the political travesty that the nation has been forced to witness for the last so many months. In all probability, the current parliamentary session may well be the last hurrah of the hapless eleventh Lok Sabha, and given the nature of the parting of ways between the two allies there is no doubt about who is going to benefit from their split in the next election, which ought to be held some time next year.

On a Rediff chat a few months ago, I had bet my last paisa that the next general election would certainly be held between late 1998-early 1999, and although I had refused to wager on who would be returned in that terribly significant election it is now obvious who it will be. I say significant because the winner will have the historical opportunity of leading the nation into a new millenium.

The reason for being mealy-mouthed then, is obvious. There is no doubt that if the United Front and the Congress would fight the election jointly, there is no chance before the Bharatiya Janata Party to come to power. Conversely, its ace was that the possibility of the two joining hands and agreeing on seat adjustments were dim at best and non-existent otherwise. The spirit of concession and accommodation needed to have pre-poll adjustments was simply absent between the two sides, but the possibility of this drawback being overcome was always there. But with the Jain Commission report, that has simply vanished.

But the niggling thought remains: after all, it did not need the report to conclude that the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the V P Singh/Chandra Shekhar governments were guilty of errors of omission in the matter. Everybody knew the kind of support that succeeding governments at the Centre and the state levels extended to the Lankan militants, the latter continuing even after the nation had declared war on the rebels whom it had once armed. In fact, the fall in the LTTE's military fortunes can be directly traced to the lack of support from the mainland here, and it took the near-vaporisation of a former prime minister to achieve that.

It can be argued till kingdom come that the central government, which means only the Congress government, had also extended assistance -- both material and moral -- to those fighting for a separate homeland in Sri Lanka. There is a qualitative difference here, which is what the Congress party is seeking to exploit through the noises it has been making through its official spokesperson. While the Centre shut off all help once the Gandhi-Jayawardene pact was signed and in fact went on the offensive against its former beneficiaries, the state government continued to side with the rebels even after the nation had gone to war with them -- which by itself amounts to an unpatriotic act and possibly sedition.

The dilemma before the Congress now is clear: How can you continue to support a formation when an influential component of it has been indicted by an independent judicial commission? To that extent, the report is only a tool in its plan to destabilise the government, the fact being that the DMK's tangential role in the murder was known within minutes after the assassination. The party, it may be recalled, was wiped out in the assembly election held soon after the murder, the electorate no doubt indicting the party for the gun culture it spawned in a once peaceful state. If the Congress chose to remain silent about the DMK when it decided to support the United Front, it was for political reasons alone.

All through, the Congress's gameplan was evident. It knew it had lost steam across the nation, and a clutch of regional, sectarian parties had eaten into its votebank and what was left of it was raided by the Masjid-Mandal factors. It knew that the biggest gainer from its own erosion was not so much the regional parties, which have been consistently putting up a good show at the hustings, but the BJP. It knew, or rather, believed, that the BJP wave could be contained in time, and time was what it was buying when it decided to support the UF. At the same time, it also realised that the longer it allowed the Front to continue in power, greater would become the latter's credibility among the electorate, much to its own detriment.

Technically, what this meant was that despite proclamations that the support to the Front was for the full term, the Congress was looking for the opportune moment to strike. The March 30 manouevre against H D Deve Gowda was only a dry run, the final denouement will be unveiled in a few weeks's time.

According to the Congress's calculations, Justice Jain's interim report packs enough ammo which allows it to one, withdraw support to the Front government on the issue of dropping the DMK, and two, to go to the people for a fresh verdict. The former is justified; after all, if the views of the Congress rank and file were taken into account, the party should never have agreed to support the Front even earlier, but having done that it cannot be seen to be supporting a government containing elements which colluded with the assassins of its brightest star.

In other words, there is no way for the Congress to support the UF with the DMK in it, and there is no way for the UF to drop the DMK under pressure from the Congress. Either way, it is a no-win situation for I K Gujral, India's most unfortunate prime minister, and the pack of jokers he heads. And naturally, the smile is on the face of the BJP.

Saisuresh Sivaswamy