ELECTION 99
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
ELECTIONS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

For whom the bell tolls

It never rains," runs the old adage, "but that it pours." Sonia Gandhi knows the whole Bofors investigation is uncomfortably close to naming names. She is in trouble over the way she grabbed a huge chunk of prime real estate in the heart of Delhi in the name of the Indira Gandhi Arts Centre. The last thing she needs right now is a full-blown ministerial crisis in one of the few states that are still with the Congress.

That is what she has got in the shape of a rebellion in Goa. True, it is a very small state, but it is strategically placed between Maharashtra and Karnataka, and events here could trigger a domino effect -- in Bombay if not Bangalore.

Goa went to the polls six months ago, well before the rest of the country. (The Constitution didn't permit postponement of the assembly elections until the Lok Sabha polls were due.) The result was a modest victory for the Congress, with the party getting 21 of the 40 assembly seats. That wasn't enough for the Congress party managers who had just seen how a government in Delhi could be toppled by a single vote.

In true and tested tradition, the Congress chose defections as the quick route to a majority. The Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party and Sharad Pawar's new Nationalist Congress Party were broken. And so the Congress numbers rose to 26, thus making up roughly two-third of the House. Then came the Lok Sabha polls...

It turned out that Goa's voters resented this policy of strengthening a majority through defections. And so, rather to everyone's surprise both the Lok Sabha seats in the state fell to the Bharatiya Janata Party.

One of these two seats has a substantial number of Roman Catholic voters. With Sonia Gandhi as president of the Congress and another Catholic, Luizinho Faleiro, as chief minister, the Congress was absolutely cocksure about winning at least this Lok Sabha seat. Obviously, this calculation didn't work -- proving that the Congress president wasn't much of a vote-catcher even with her co-religionists.

One of the first to act on this was Francisco Sardinha. He has prior experience of leaving the Congress, once forming the Rajiv Congress. That 'loyalty' to the late Congress president didn't however prevent him from upsetting the cart for Rajiv Gandhi's wife. And so he walked out of the party, taking ten others with him. This is where the fun begins...

Sardinha is being backed by the BJP and the NCP amongst others. Pawar is obviously out to take revenge for the Congress breaking his party earlier. In neighbouring Maharashtra, the Congress and the NCP have formed an uneasy alliance. And now here comes the president of the NCP abusing the Congress as a party that encourages defection... There is nothing the Congress can do about it. After all, Pawar cheerfully blamed Sonia Gandhi's leadership for the Congress debacle in the general election -- and they didn't dare open their mouths after that supreme insult. So why should they sacrifice their ministerial posts in Bombay no matter what happens in Panjim?

But at some point, Sharad Pawar's calculated needling is bound to rub off even on Congressmen. After all, he has a point when he lambastes Sonia Gandhi's record. The Congress boss had a dream run in her first six months, winning assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi, and Goa. But a few months later, the same party lost heavily in the Lok Sabha polls in precisely those states. The implication is that Sonia Gandhi is unacceptable even if leaders at the local level can win votes.

What has she done to change that impression? Tried to make an issue of Bofors -- which the rest of the opposition won't support? Tried to cling on to the Indira Gandhi Arts Centre? Allowed matters in Bihar to drift until Laloo Prasad Yadav broke ties with the Congress -- with just months to go for the Vidhan Sabha polls? Small wonder if some Congressmen are wondering if Sonia Gandhi is fit to lead...

The crisis in Goa might have been used to answer her critics that she is capable of learning from her errors. Six months ago she reacted badly when faced with a revolt; the result was that Maharashtra had to be written off in the Lok Sabha polls. If she fails yet again, the murmurs about her leadership skills will be heard even more often in her party. They are already louder than they were when the Congress came to power in Goa.

T V R Shenoy