Within a month of offering to resign as the Leader of the Opposition – a move that he postponed to finetune his succession line – veteran BJP leader L.K.Advani announced on September 9 that he would once again undertake a ‘yatra’ and traverse the whole country to raise awareness against corruption. While taking everyone by surprise in unilaterally making the announcement, he had not categorically ruled out his being BJP’s Prime ministerial candidate during the next Lok Sabha election.
Advani's latest yatra plan comes almost 20 years after his Ram Rath Yatra and the subsequent Janadesh Yatra, Swarna Jayanti Rath Yatra, Bharat Uday Yatra and Bharat Suraksha Yatra. Treating these yatras as the continuation of a tradition that is "universal" as well as "deeply rooted" in Hindutva, Advani has used them as a tool for mobilising mass support. While the Ram Rath Yatra of 1990 did lead to a resurgence in the BJP's communal support base, others evoked doubtful results.
If the 2009 Lok Sabha elections are any indication, Advani's Bharat Suraksha Yatra in 2007 aimed at exposing ‘the UPA government's failure to tackle terrorism and expose its policy of Muslim appeasement’ failed to make much difference. Nor did his Bharat Uday Yatra, which virtually amounted to a campaign for the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. When Advani announced that he proposed another cross-country yatra aimed at rejuvenating the party, many of his colleagues were caught by surprise. A section within the BJP sees it as an indication of Advani's determination to cling on to power by perpetuating factionalism within the BJP's Gen Next.
Advani's rath yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya brought BJP within striking distance from the seat of power at the Centre. Two decades later as Advani prepares to saddle the rath once again, there is unease within the sangh parivaar. Even the BJP was caught unawares. Only after the announcement was made, did the Parliamentary board on Sep.9 discussed the plan in detail. But Advani's new found aggression has further raked leadership issues within the BJP, with Advani in contention. Succession plans to post Vajpayee-Advani era for the BJP remains undecided even seven years after BJP lost power at the Centre. The party however remains ambiguous on who would be the Prime Ministerial candidate for the BJP in the run-up to 2014 general elections. Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj on Sep.9 said, "The yatra has got nothing to do with that" and her counterpart in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley quoted her reaction. Clearly, the world has clearly changed for the rath yaatri.
But the truth is the BJP is in trouble. The problems are clearly identifiable: no clarity on leadership, confusion over the political and ideological direction, and the inability to attract allies to expand the almost defunct National Democratic Alliance. Credible solutions to these key problems, many leaders say, are crucial for its fortunes in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
The biggest problem is the seemingly intractable question: “who’s the BJP leader”. In its 31 years of existence, the BJP is trying to lead a life without its two towering leaders —AB Vajpayee and LK Advani — for the first time; never mind Advani’s yatra ambitions. Their political acumen, experience and profiles have been the guiding force for the party in its formative years and subsequent expansion that culminated in NDA rule for six years beginning 1998.
The BJP’s fall from grace since 2004 and its ongoing struggle to regain political momentum is a story that runs parallel to the retirement of Vajpayee and fading of Advani. The transition has hardly been smooth. Consider the BJP’s recent travails. The lead role in the ‘battle against corruption’ was quietly usurped by civil rights activists. The main opposition party ended up playing the role of a sidekick, an awkward performance to say the least.
For the BJP, the projection of a ‘leader’ as the party’s face has traditionally been a key tactic. The projection of Vajpayee in the 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2004 elections and Advani in 2009 were the centrepiece of the party’s election blueprint. By pitting Vajpayee against the ‘Sonia Gandhi-led Congress’, the BJP dared the grand old party to reveal its prime ministerial candidate in three successive elections. Even in 2009, the BJP sought a mandate by pitting ‘the strong L K Advani’ against the ‘weak Manmohan Singh”. Yet, such is the leadership tussle in BJP that president Nitin Gadkari was forced to announce his party will not project a pre-poll prime ministerial candidate in the 2014 polls.
The post Vajpayee-Advani era triggered a full-scale war among a clutch of aspirants. Senior leaders Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and Narendra Modi have emerged as the front-runners. Today, each is projected as the party’s prime ministerial candidate. Another batch of equally-ambitious leaders like Gadkari, and Rajnath Singh too are hopeful of a favourable turn in their political future.
The leadership issue has created factions in the BJP central leadership. Old-timers say they are dismayed. “Vajpayji and Advaniji were tempered in their decades of political work/struggles. In their conduct and success lies a message for everyone; that leadership is never grabbed, authority is not conferred and power is not simply office,” says party veteran Jaswant Singh. But the struggle for leadership is getting noisier at 11, Ashoka Road, the BJP’s national HQ. The Jaitley-Sushma contest is hard to miss in and outside Parliament. Modi, meanwhile, never loses an opportunity to showcase his credentials. Party senior Yashwant Sinha says the new leadership will have to emerge, not appointed. “That is what happened in the case of both Vajpayee and Advani.”
Regardless of the outcome, party workers are being treated to a full-fledged succession battle. Supporters of Sushma point to her ‘credible electoral trackrecord’ and ‘impressive oratory skills’. But her in-house critics whisper about her alleged links with the infamous Bellary Reddys. When Congress leader Digvijay Singh sought an inquiry into Sushma’s and Venkaiah Naidu’s alleged links with the Reddy brothers, some BJP leaders were more excited than Congress peers.
Similarly, each time the Jaitley camp heaps praise on his ‘brilliant debating skills’, ‘superb grasp of law’, ‘his stellar role as an electoral strategist’, rivals in the party point out that he may be a great debater and master spin master but he has “zero electoral track-record and no mass appeal”, as one BJP veteran puts it.
Narendra Modi? Few in BJP deny his ‘administrative skills’, but there are more than a few who argue projecting the Gujarat chief minister nationally means giving the Congress a gift of all minority votes everywhere. All this, and then there’s the question in the BJP about the soon-to-be-yatri Advani. Does he still want the top job is a question no BJP member will openly ask but plenty are privately wondering about.
After the announcement of Advani’s Rath Yatra, comes the Sadbhavana Mission to be undertaken by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Modi has declared that he will go on a fast for three days from Sep.17 to Sep.19.
The fast, announced by Modi in his letter addressed to citizens, is to further strengthen Gujarat’s environment of peace, unity and harmony. With a single masterstroke, Modi has managed to steal a march over his competitors in the party to become BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate, giving a new twist to the power struggle in the BJP. All along, the handicap for Modi has been his anti-Muslim image. Modi is attempting an image makeover to get over the riots taint, in order to gain wider acceptability. After repeating the hat-trick in Gujarat in 2012, he may move to the national scene in the run-up to the General Election in 2014.
When Gadkari’s party-presidential term ends in December next year, political analysts expect a scramble for the top BJP job. A couple of very senior leaders are also lobbying for the party president’s job. One of the much-discussed topics in the BJP is whether the RSS will spring another surprise — as it did with Gadkari — to ensure that ‘status quo in party leadership’ prevails till the 2014 polls.
There are reports that many in the BJP hope that rather than slug it out, the leaders would help the party get back to shape by evolving a positive electoral message that, in turn, helps in expanding the NDA. On this front, the BJP seems caught between its electoral compulsions to be a “right-of-centre moderate party” and its Hindutva leanings. That is evident when the RSS nudges the party to wade into tricky areas like “Hindu right-wing terror”. Many in the BJP are aware of the need to project the party’s commitment to “economic reforms, vibrant administration and social harmony”.
Many others in the BJP are saddened by the party’s shrill minority bashing and its inability to find a “Vajpayee-like reassuring face”. The NDA rallied over 20 allies during the Vajpayee regime. It is now reduced to three partners — the JD(U) Akali Dal and Shiv Sena. Old allies like ADMK, TDP, BJD, AGP and INLD prefer to stay away. On the other hand, the Congress has around seven allies within the UPA-II even while tactically keeping ‘outside supporters’ like SP, BSP, RJD and PDP guessing.
The BJP’s limitations in winning allies was well demonstrated when it won only less than 10 of the 800-odd Assembly constituencies in five states in the May polls. The party’s leadership, poll message and coalition appeal will be put to test in the 2012 state elections in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand and — most important — Uttar Pradesh. A good show in 2012, especially in UP, may get more small parties interested in the BJP. But will it help resolve the leadership issue?
No comments:
Post a Comment