By Sanjay Singh / Delhi
It was all over in 15 minutes. That including the time of exchange of pleasantries of heavyweight UPA ministers and notes of dissent by two alliance partners Sharad Pawar and Farooq Abdullah over the manner in which it was being done. Ultimately the Union Cabinet in its one of the shortest meetings “unanimously” decided that both the Ordinance and Bill on convicted MPs and MLAs, both be killed.
For once, it also didn’t matter that the Bill, which was earlier moved in Parliament and sent to the Standing Committee, was therefore now the property of the House and it was in its singular jurisdiction to decide on its fate. The diktat of Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi had to prevail.
Rahul Gandhi triumphed against his own government, against the supposedly supreme core group and against his own party. His mother, Sonia Gandhi may still be the party president but the power centre has shifted to him. Henceforth he is the supreme leader even if he still ‘just’ the Congress vice president, and not yet a part of the core group and does not hold a constitutional post or position in the government. He is also not a part of the structured decision making process in what is still a coalition UPA government, not a Congress government.
For the believers in his party, he has replaced Sonia as the new “conscience” keeper of the government and party leaders would now like to believe that with his “nonsense” intervention, he has successfully detached himself from the ills of the UPA and presented himself as a fresh breath energy to the young electorate to counter a growing Modimania.
This could well be through an understanding between mother and son. Nobody in the party sees this as a mother-son conflict but instead as a situation where the two are complimenting each other in a classic good cop-bad cop routine. Or in this case, soft mother-tough son routine.
To Rahul’s or his core strategist’s credit he picked the right issue to make his voice heard, one in which public sensitivity was already very strong and a politically astute President Pranab Mukherjee was not inclined to give his assent to a legally flawed ordinance.
But Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who has never been his own man, has from this point onwards been further reduced to nothing more than the titular head of the executive, whose role it is to take all the blame for whatever goes wrong in the UPA government.
Though he does feel hurt or thinks his position has been undermined, his comments aboard Air India One — “I think, I have been used to ups and downs and I don’t get easily upset”— and chosen to stay put in office, his existence for all practical purposes is now completely immaterial.
In the party where symbolism around Mahatma Gandhi matters a lot, the rising of Rahul Gandhi and establishment of his command as the supreme authority, from the Congress perspective, happened on Mahatma’s 144 birthday. While the nation holidayed, the Prime Minister had to work overtime despite the fact that he had returned from the US only the previous night to make sure that Rahul’s wish on the Ordinance was turned into a command for him, the core group, the party and the Cabinet.
During his Gujarat election campaign speeches Rahul kept stressing on the fact that he saw Mahatma Gandhi as his Guru, and shared his feelings of compassion. He perhaps didn’t want to go through the ritual of visiting Raj Ghat to participate in the official function and be seen by the side of Prime Minister while paying homage.
Interestingly, it was in May this year in a closed door meeting of Delhi Congress leaders Rahul had said that he was not “soft like the Congress president (mother Sonia)” and then pointing at a picture of his grandmother Indira Gandhi, said that he was “strong like her”. His words indicated that she was his ideal and idol. His supporters believe that just like Indira took on entrenched old guards in Congress, he too demolished the perceived might of old guards in just one go. He thus should not just be respected but also be feared.
Whether or not last Friday’s “tear up and throw away” intervention was Rahul’s Indira Gandhi moment can’t be decided yet but the fact remains that the Congress vice president has successfully transformed his image, from a tentative reluctant politician to an assertive, even authoritarian leader. Something that the Congress’s rank and file so desperately wanted to see, if they were to fight against the challenges mounted by an aggressive Narendra Modi.
Through his ambush act Rahul earned some temporary displeasure of allies like NCP’s Sharad Pawar and NC’s Farooq Abdullah but they also made sure that they did nothing beyond simply putting their reservations on record. Abdullah said that Rahul’s actions undermined the position of the Prime Minister and the entire Cabinet but hoped that he would not resort to a course of action like that ever again. But having said that, they don’t either want to rock the UPA boat in which they have been so comfortably sailing for so long.
But then Rahul and the Congress can celebrate for other reasons. They now have the JD(U) now looking expectantly at Congress. If Nitish Kumar praised Rahul on Monday, JD(U) spokesman Rajiv Ranjan Singh took hail Rahul’s theme to a new high and declare that the option of an alliance with Congress was open.
Also, it was the first time in last many months that Narendra Modi was not shown or reported live even as he was in Delhi, attending a youth convention of the Manthan hearing, discussing and speaking on his agenda for the 2014 general elections. TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu shared the dais with him.
But for once, the media was more interested in Rahul Gandhi. The challenge for him now however, will be how he fares as a full time politician, not one who simply engages in hit and run politics.
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