Congress in disarray. Rahul damaged. Sonia returns to fix mess

Sonia Gandhi's dilemmas


The president of the Congress Party had to be rushed to New York for emergency cancer surgery. Sonia Gandhi's absence during the Hazare public protest and nation-wide outrage, led to confusion and back-tracking by the government.


She is back now and supposed to be recuperating. But she has to restore order within Congress and the government. Both retreated in public humiliation after bungling the Hazare protest.


The iron lady has to deal with the following challenges: How to fashion a Lokpal Bill which will have sufficient teeth to chill elected crooks but not allow mob justice? What happens if it results in full scale investigations of Congress politicians? What if Hazare resumes his public fast as he has threatened to do, if his version of the Lokpal Bill is not passed into law? 


Can she still steer Rahul to the prime ministership? He has lost stature after failing to connect with the agitated youth who came out in force to support Anna Hazare. Who else is there with credibility to lead Congress and the government? What about the next election? Is Congress not guaranteed to be turfed out already? After Sonia who?


All too much for one just recovering from cancer surgery.



Government in retreat


Both the Indian government and its Congress Party leadership failed to read the deep public resentment against the corrupt political class. They arrested the 74 year old Anna Hazare and his small band of followers. That catapulted him into the national consciousness and fanned public outrage. 


Then the country's shrill TV stations turned him into a celebrity with 24-hour coverage and panel punditry. Then twitterati and facebook activists spread viral messages of a corrupt power structure victimizing an old man who dared to protest. 


Then the government spin masters falsely accused Hazare and his team of tax evasion, corrupt land deals and more. He challenged them to charge him.


That jolted the urban middle class, NGOs, youth and the unemployed to join the rising public outcry. They found ready targets in the morally bankrupt Congress-led government beset with massive unresolved scandals. 


The police were instructed to release him with conditions attached. Hazare ignored all the conditions and started a public fast at the Ramlila Maidan in the national capital.


Hazare campaign professionally media-managed


Hazare's campaign managers were seasoned media minds and legal experts. They turned him into the second coming of Mahatma Gandhi. Hazare launched a 'second revolution' to rid the nation of what he called the new oppressors of the people. 


The blow-up poster of Gandhi dominated the raised dais on which the frail Hazare undertook his fast. The revered Mahatma and Hazare were linked in TV images beamed to the nation. 


T-shirts, Gandhi caps, dancing performances, Bollywood stars and pop-songs entertained the crowds. It turned into a national carnival with peaceful mass protests in several cities across the country.


The Anna Hazare team lobbied for the 'Jan Lokpal' Bill to replace the 'toothless' government version. 


Prime minister Manmohan Singh capitulated with the full support of the Opposition benches, on the 12th day of Hazare's fast, fearing his death on stage would unleash mob rampage against Parliament and all its representatives. Manmohan Singh agreed in principle to accept all his demands. 


The government bought time by passing his Bill to the house standing committee to vet along with other submissions. Now Sonia Gandhi has to craft a formula to reconcile the extreme positions on the Lokpal Bill.


'Jan Lokpal' challenges Congress, Govt. & Opposition


Hazare's Citizens' Ombudsman Bill (Jan Lokpal) seeks to set up an independent bureaucracy to vet public complaints against state legislators and members of parliament, police, judges, ministers and prime minister. No one is exempt. Fast justice is to be meted out. The guilty would be imprisoned and their assets seized.


There is no separation of powers between investigation, prosecution and sentencing. The administration of the Jan Lokpal as Hazare envisages it, is a law unto itself. It answers to no one. There are no external checks and balances. There is no independent appeal process. Who will guard the guards is unanswered.


The mischief of the political class aside, there is every danger of this supra-government, moralistic crusade degenerating quickly into vendettas, revenge, false accusations and witch hunts on a national scale. Revolutions and jihads throughout history have shown how power unchecked turns into mass abuse.


The Congress Party finds itself on the wrong side of the debate. It has projected itself as willing to use heavy boots to stop the people's call for clean government. It has been forced into the losing position of seeming to protect privilege and corrupt practices. Perception is everything in politics. Congress is unlikely to be voted back into office.


Rahul Gandhi stumbles


In the leadership vacuum left by Sonia Gandhi's emergency cancer surgery in New York, Rahul Gandhi was presented with a golden opportunity to rise to the occasion. He failed to seize the moment. 


Worse, he recited a wooden, flat script in Parliament warning the movement against usurping the role of elected lawmakers. Instead of co-opting the national anger against corruption and the intransigence of the 'old politics', he aligned himself with the Old Guard. He became part of the problem. 


The educated youth who form a growing demographic voting block in India, cannot any longer look to Rahul Gandhi for inspiration. He failed them at the most crucial moment. The youth turned to leadership of a 74-year anti-corruption crusader.





ENDS

Has democracy been hijacked by the unelected?

The world's largest democracy saw a 74 year old retired army driver become the lightning rod for a nation fed-up with endemic corruption from village to national politics.

Anna Hazare appropriated the attire, images and halo of independence-icon MahatmaGandhi, to galvanize nation-wide rage at corrupt officials.

          He called it the 'second revolution' after independence, to rid  the nation of a corrupt political class.

  

    Hazare drew a sharp distinction between the 'parliament of the people' and the parliament of the  politicians. He had no doubt in his mind which was supreme.

               It was telling that while mass support for Hazare's anti-corruption campaign cut across party affiliation, region, religion, caste and social class, local politicians and corporate leaders maintained a wall of silence.

                  Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) of 2010, ranks Singapore 3rd, Hong Kong 13th and India 87th in a tie with Albania, Liberia and Jamaica.

Hong Kong's ICAC the model for Lokpal Bill?

The politicians hoped a watered-down Lokpal Bill (Ombudsman Bill) would be a sufficient sop. Anna Hazare rejected that tokenism. He was determined to put the fear of God into the politicians, civil service, police chiefs, judges, ministers and prime minister.

                  Hazare's Jan Lokpal Bill (Citizens' Ombudsman Bill) claims inspiration from Hong Kong's Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), established in 1974, which is credited with cleaning up a very toxic mobster-business-police nexus. 

However there is one crucial difference: in the Hong Kong ICAC model, the power to investigate and the power to prosecute are separated. The power to prosecute is vested with the Secretary for Justice.

Hazare's Jan Lokpal Bill  makes it  investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner all in one, across a nation of 1.2 billion people. 

The implications of institutionalizing an all-powerful, witch-hunting, supra-government agency without external checks and balances, is scary. 

It could potentially unleash a lethal combination of hate, terror and citizen-denouncements, to match the Inquisition of the Catholic Church, the 'class struggles' of the Cultural Revolution and the kangaroo courts of crazed revolutionaries throughout history.

Hazare wants to enshrine a citizens' charter to investigate complaints, protect whistle-blowers, bring the lower levels of bureaucracy under its purview and oversee senior officials, including the prime minister - without prior approval from any government agency.

That posed a major crisis of legitimacy for the establishment. If legislators are not to have the sole mandate to draft, debate, amend and pass Bills, then a core function of parliament is surrendered to 'mobocracy'. 

For parliamentarians of all parties, that was unacceptable interference by the unelected. Indeed the whole Anna Hazare circus was 'unconstitutional' to the lawmakers.

        The people send a message to the rulers

Arresting Hazare and his supporters failed to quell the public mood or dampen his resolve. Character-assassination didn't work. Scare-mongering that this was unconstitutional hijacking of democracy, did not win sympathy.

Bowing to mounting mass protests across cities and the national capital, the prime minister acknowledged that Hazare articulated the anger of the people and that his government got the message.

He praised the man but now it was time for Hazare to end his fast and let parliament do its job. Democracy itself was at stake.

In a rare show of unanimity, MPs thumped their desks to approve 'A sense of the House' in accepting the demands of the movement - without a formal vote. The prime minister referred the drafting of the Lokpal Bill to the house standing committee.

               Stop the man before he becomes a martyr! 

Parliamentarians were fearful of the 74 year old dying on public display - with entirely dicey outcomes for them all. Such melodrama would have the potential to unleash mob rampage on Parliament in Delhi.

It was urgent to stop the veteran faster expiring on stage. The acute sense of a shared fate closed the ranks of the  parliamentarians, enabling the PM to deliver his capitulation letter to Anna through emissaries.

The Ramlila Maidan protest was non-violent and carnivalesque, fed by round-the-clock TV coverage and the frail Hazare decked out below a giant backdrop of Mahatma Gandhi.

It attracted NGO activists, Bollywood stars, the unemployed, pensioners, tourists, students and loafers out for free lunches.

'I am Anna' T-shirts and Gandhi caps were readily available, along with pop-songs to jolly the crowds.

Lokpal Bill tabled 42 years, not passed 

It was in 1963 that 31-year old independent MP Dr L M Singhvi first called for an independent Ombudsman to check abuses of power. Then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru asked in jest of the young Singhvi "To what zoo does this animal belong? Dr Singhvi you must indigenize it."

L M Singhvi then coined the Sanskrit terms Lokpal ('Protector of the People') and Lokayukt for the Ombudsman and state-level watchdogs. He lobbied vigorously for adoption of a Lokpal Bill from 1963-67.

As an independent without a party machinery behind him, he failed to muster support. He continued to champion it after he left parliament. 

In 1969 home minister Y B Chavan moved for the Bill and it was passed in the Lok Sabha (House of the People) but parliament was dissolved before it could be ratified in the Rajya Sabha (Council of the States) to become law.

The Lokpal Bill continued to be raised fitfully in 1971, 1977, 1985, 1989, 1996, 1998, 2001, 2005 and 2008 under successive governments but failed to win favour with the majority of MPs.

Beneficiaries of corruption have little incentive to change the status quo. The Washington Post in 2008 reported that nearly 25% of the 540 sitting members of parliament faced criminal charges "including human trafficking, immigration rackets, embezzlement, rape and even murder."

Hazare's distrust of parliament even as he agreed to end his fast, made him insist that the Lokpal Bill be debated immediately and passed into law during the current monsoon session of both houses. He warned the government that he would resume his fast if it failed to incorporate his terms or stalled the process.

Given the task of studying the many submissions for the Lokpal Bill from NGOs, citizens' groups and government agencies, it is unlikely that the Standing Committee can conclude its work in haste.

    Poetic Justice or Supreme Irony? 

           

The head of the Standing Committee on Law and Justice is Abhishek Manu Singhvi, son of anti-corruption activist Dr L M Singhvi who lobbied unsuccessfully for an Ombudsman Bill back in 1963. 

Expectations are high that Abhishek Singhvi will do a thorough job to complete what his father could not. This time there is an outraged and vigilant civil society behind the Bill.

Like Jawarharlal Nehru, Manmohan Singh is respected for his integrity - but reviled for failing to exorcise a deeply corrupt Congress Party machinery.

      
         Nehru-Gandhi clan's iron grip on corrupt earnings 

The financial levers for Congress Party funds are firmly in the grasp of Sonia Gandhi. It is widely believed that only the Gandhis have effective access to the considerable party finances parked internationally.

That financial grip is credited for the powerful influence Sonia Gandhi exerts from behind the curtain, on party policy.

In 1992, former Izvestia journalist and Harvard Nieman Fellow, Yevgenia Albats cited KGB correspondence about payments to Rajiv Gandhi and his family. 

KGB chief Victor Chebrikov sought authorization in writing to funnel US dollar payments to Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Paola Maino (Sonia's mother!) from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in Dec 1985.

The Bofors scandal of 1984 cost Rajiv Gandhi's Congress government the 1989 election. It was his own Finance Minister, V P Singh, who uncovered the pay-offs by the Swedish arms supplier through Italian Ottavio Quattrocchi, a Sonia crony. V P SIngh was dismissed from office and later expelled from the party.

More recently, the 2G Spectrum allocation scandal and the Commonwealth Games fiasco have sullied the government and ruling party, confirming that nothing has changed.

  

Sonia Gandhi's recent emergency surgery in the USA and closely guarded state of health, is a major concern for party insiders. Rahul Gandhi may have to be delegated more of mom's sensitive management burdens. 

    Has Rahul Gandhi shot himself in the foot? 

Rahul Gandhi's limp prepared statement in parliament on the Lokpal Bill, read in a mumbling monotone, warning of the dangers of populist movements usurping the legislative process, was dismissed as self-serving.

Touted as a future prime minister, Rahul's performance on the Lokpal Bill does not project him in the best light. Indeed it may stiffen the sentiment against dynastic succession.

It could as well diminish his appeal to the youth of India, whose increasing proportion in the voting demographics is a crucial factor in elections. He is the Congress Party's youth card.

       Things may never be the same again

Wikileaks' next tranche of documents hint at disclosing identities behind Indian funds banked in Swiss accounts.

   

Data provided by the Swiss Banking Association Report (2006) indicate that India has more black money (about USD 1.4 trillion) stashed there than the rest of the world combined. Indian-owned Swiss Bank account assets were worth 13 times the country's national debt!

Rank-and-file MPs are alarmed that the Lokpal Bill would cast the shadow of criminality on their ready access to projects, permits, contracts and funds at national and state levels.

That an independent Ombudsman answerable only to the people can investigate, name, shame and punish them, is a chilling prospect for many.

It almost renders the whole effort of getting elected pointless!

Author Aravind Adiga observed at a BBC interview on winning the MAN Booker Prize for The White Tiger (2008): "There are two ways to become a millionaire in India: You can be a criminal or become a politician. But politics in India is just another form of criminality."

          

ENDS