Politically in self-chosen wilderness, the Left parties, more particularly the CPI (M) seems to be in quandary. The interview of its General Secretary Com. Prakash Karat to ‘The Times of India’ on Jan 2 indicates the position of uncertainty in which they are placed now to work out a strategy for the next Lok Sabha elections. Asked about it, he has said, “There is going to be an overall loose understanding between various non-Congress secular parties, regional parties and the Left. This may not translate into a specific election alliance but is part of a larger co-ordination. After the elections this can get solidified into a combination”.
Asked about the talk of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha becoming a rallying point, he has said “We expect the ADMK-led alliance to do very well in Tamil Nadu. Jayalalitha will emerge as an important factor in the future arrangement”.
Mercifully, he does not seem to be sharing the wild dream of her minions projecting her as the next Prime Minister!
The nation has already undergone travails and tribulations of the very costly experiment with an arrangement at the Centre in which Jayalalitha was an important factor. Even in his frail health condition now that suave gentleman and former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajapayee will shudder at the very thought of those 13 gruelling months in 1998-99 when Jayalalitha was a demanding constituent of the NDA government at the Centre led by him.
Communist party leaders are well known for exhaustively citing instances from history in their speeches and writings to the point of tiring out listeners/readers. So, it is now forgetfulness that has made Com. Karat not reminding people and his ranks of those testing months when the government at the Centre was precariously hanging at the mercy of whims and fancies of the lady of Poes Garden and ultimately collapsed. But the political convenience and compulsion which his party has invited for itself that has made the learned General Secretary to expect a disaster to take place!
However we have to jog the memory of people in general, the rank and file of Left parties in particular, of that trying period.
The very installation of the Vajpayee led National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre after the Lok Sabha elections in 1998 was dragged by Jayalalitha to the point of the Prime Minister-elect virtually shedding tears in agony in a Press Meet.
The events were recorded in an article in the English weekly ‘Outlook’ in its issue of March 23, 1998, parts of which is reproduced here:
“IT was the BJP’s worst nightmare come true. After its assiduously negotiated electoral alliances took it to the threshold of power, it was being held to ransom by ADMK chief J.Jayalalitha even before its government could be sworn in. So much so that even her apparent climb down on giving a letter of support—with all its attendant bluster—has left the BJP leadership in a bit of a quandary.
The initial snub was administered by Jayalalitha by making the BJP leadership wait for nearly three days for her letter of support.
When it was finally sent on March 14, at the last possible moment, it went straight to President K.R. Narayanan, with the BJP leadership at the receiving end of only the sharpest criticism and a strongly-worded attack questioning both its attitude and intention.
This was so despite Atal Behari Vajpayee having tried to seize the political advantage and what is left of the moral high-ground in the current scenario—by giving Narayanan evidence of the support of just 240 MPs on March 12, he had effectively called her bluff and forced her hand. The upshot: unless the president takes a bleak view of the shenanigans and name-calling that preceded the submission of the letters of support by the BJP’s “allies” in Tamil Nadu, Vajpayee is bound to be sworn in as prime minister sooner rather than later.
It is, perhaps, symbolic of the state of the alliance that at the end of a 72-hour wait on Saturday afternoon, it was the BJP’s bete noire and Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy who led a group of the party’s Tamil Nadu allies to the President to submit the letter announcing ‘outside’ support. But given the numbers game in the 12th Lok Sabha, the matter is far from resolved—notwithstanding Jayalalitha’s affirmation of support of 27 MPs to the BJP in the “national interest” because she “did not want to be a hurdle in government formation”.
This was more than evident from the reaction of BJP president L.K. Advani, who interrupted his meeting with senior BJP leaders and alliance partners at Vajpayee’s residence on hearing of Jayalalitha’s decision. He told reporters that he was “gratified that Ms. Jayalalitha has announced her support and hopeful that all hurdles would be overcome by addressing her concerns though not bowing to any conditions. But we are not staking any claim. Let the invitation come from the president as he has initiated the process of government formation.”
CLEARLY, the BJP leadership, more than aware of Murphy’s law, is advancing with caution. As Advani told Outlook: “We are aware of the fact that those opposing us would like us to form the government and then attempt to bring it down.” The BJP’s central leadership is palpably apprehensive of the Jayalalitha-Swamy duo’s next move. Indeed, nobody is willing to put money on their continued support during a prospective motion of no-confidence against the BJP.
But for now the ADMK alliance’s choices are limited. Sonia Gandhi’s takeover as Congress president and the accompanying acrimony in her party have made the Congress a less attractive alternative. Besides, the DMK-TMC combine is still an integral part of the United Front, whose support is crucial to any Congress-led government. And as a BJP general secretary notes, “Once a government is formed, incumbency offers many advantages.” An attempt to muster up numbers in Parliament and the threat of dissolution, which no sitting MP would want, among them.
Says a senior BJP leader: “It is understandable that Jayalalitha is letting off steam since she has had to make an inglorious climb down in the face of our resolve not to agree to any conditions. Her anger, though, would be better directed at those who wanted plum positions in the Union Cabinet and obviously misled her into believing that we were prepared to make any sacrifices to achieve power.”
Still, the ADMK’s aggressive posturing has put a question mark over a BJP coalition’s longevity. Jayalalitha’s decision to call back all her MPs to Chennai and her announcement that she would not attend Vajpayee’s swearing-in ceremony have already set off warning bells. But neither the BJP nor its allies can afford to be seen as not trying to form a government after getting so close. That is why the party has deftly thrown the ball into the President’s court, “without agreeing to any conditions and thereby keeping our image intact”.
The mood among BJP leaders in Chennai is less conciliatory. Says one of the senior-most leaders in the BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit: “Never before were we humiliated like this. Even Mayawati treated us with much more respect. If this is realpolitik, then most of us may have either to transform ourselves fully or opt for RSS-related social work.”
HE is equally clear about the dilemma before his party: “I don’t have an honest answer to the question whether she will support us during the confidence vote. But our problem is, we cannot reject Jayalalitha’s support because we don’t have the numbers. And we can’t accept her because she has cast aspersions on Advani and Vajpayee. What will stop her from getting up one fine morning and pulling down a Vajpayee-led government just because, say, George Fernandes addresses an international socialist congress or S. Gurumurthy says something pungent about corruption!” It is significant, however, that the ADMK is not as solidly behind Jayalalitha as is made out. Some party leaders concede that Jayalalitha has bent over backwards for Cabinet positions for Swamy and V. Ramamurthy to get out of the corruption cases against her “at the cost of the party cadre”.
But at the national level, while her ‘conditions’ have been rejected, her ‘concerns’ have been taken into account to give her a face-saving sop. BJP sources said Advani had conveyed to Jayalalitha that the proposed alliance’s “national agenda” would address her “concerns about a package for Tamil Nadu wherever possible”. Accordingly, it was announced on March 14 that the final draft of the agenda had been delayed to incorporate the ADMK’s suggestions…..
..Even so, this may well be the beginning, not the end, of the BJP’s troubles. Swamy and Jayalalitha are not known for their capacity to forgive and forget. In fact, Vajpayee was more than aware that he was dealing with an unpredictable ally even before the alliance was struck. During the BJP’s national executive meet at Bhubaneshwar a few months ago, the usually word-perfect leader was distinctly uncomfortable while trying to fend off questions relating to his party’s deal with the “corrupt” Jayalalitha on the one hand and criticism of Laloo Prasad Yadav on the other.
Later, addressing delegates at a private session, Vajpayee reportedly used an analogy from the Mahabharata to explain his predicament: “The moment Yudhishtira took upon himself the responsibility of lying to Dronacharya during the battle that Ashwatthama was dead, as that was the only way to prevent the triumph of evil over good, the wheels of his chariot, that were always four inches above the ground, came to the ground with a thud.” What Vajpayee probably hadn’t bargained for was that Jayalalitha would prove to be the sort of ally who is not only difficult to defend but against whom the BJP would have to defend itself”.
Some of comments by readers on this article were not only interesting but also prophetical.
“Apropos the cover story Beware the Smiles of March (March 23), the BJP, which all along projected itself as a party with a difference left no stone unturned to pitch the saffron tent at South Block. I’d like to ask every right-thinking Indian—what’s the difference between a Jayalalitha and a Laloo Yadav? Both have corruption charges pending against them. Yet the BJP’s alliance with her proves that the party is willing to make any number of compromises.
Another glaring example is the BJP’S joining hands with Sukh Ram in Himachal, against whom it had earlier launched a tirade. Vajpayee has to give an explanation. The nation demands it.
-Saionton Basu, New Delhi
What we saw was just a ‘trailer’ of a movie in the making titled “AIADMK—All in All Dekho Mera Kamal” starring Dr Jaya with Atalji et al. This is a definite case of quid pro quo; if she has saved Atalji, the latter will return the favour by providing her ‘immunity’ from prosecution in the court cases pending against her. If not, the BJP rule could prove short-lived.
-R.N. Vaswani, Mumbai
Jayalalitha’s claim to make Tamil one of the official languages sounds hollow when she calls Chennai as ‘Madras’ in her soundbites on television.
-R. Mohan, Bangalore
It was disgusting to see the BJP, despite winning a reasonably popular mandate, struggling to form a government because Jayalalitha backed out. Thankfully, her attempts to dictate the ministry-formation came to naught. But it showed that politics of blackmail is more perilous than opportunistic politics and makes the system defective from within.
-Nilay V. Anjaria, Ahmedabad.
If these were the views of the media in general and people (represented by these readers) on Jayalalitha’s tantrums vis-à-vis NDA government at the Centre during the formation, the manoeuvres of her in bringing down the Vajpayee-led government after 13 months of precarious survival at her mercy were summed up in an article under the heading ‘The countdown to collapse’ in the ‘Frontline’ magazine in its issue dated April 24-May 9, 1999, which is as follows:
“When All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam general secretary Jayalalitha arrived in New Delhi on the night of April 12, the purpose of her visit was all too evident. Her parting of ways with the Bharatiya Janata Party was on the cards, and she went about the operation in a measured fashion, weighing the responses from the BJP and Opposition camps before taking the decisive step. She had tested the waters during her sojourn in the national capital from March 26 to 30. Her aim of provoking the BJP further was achieved through calculated outbursts on the Vishnu Bhagwat issue. Her demands were that the former naval chief should be reinstated; Defence Minister George Fernandes should quit or be relieved of his portfolio; and a Joint Parliamentary Committee probe should be ordered.
Close on the heels of the BJP National Executive meeting in Goa, the Union Cabinet met on April 5, and rejected all her demands. The Cabinet met sans the AIADMK Ministers, M. Thambidurai and M.R. Janarthanam, who were in Chennai. The Cabinet decision marked a triumph for the hardliners in the BJP, who wanted Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to call Jayalalitha’s bluff. Only two days earlier, Vajpayee had distanced himself from Rangarajan Kumaramangalam’s remark that the AIADMK could withdraw from the ruling coalition if it did not agree with the Government’s stand. The AIADMK wanted Vajpayee to disapprove of Kumaramangalam’s remark, but he merely termed it Kumaramangalam’s personal opinion.
The BJP hardliners who urged Vajpayee to take a harsh line against the AIADMK included L.K. Advani, Pramod Mahajan and party president Kushabhau Thakre. The view in party circles was that Kumaramangalam had done nothing wrong and that he had only underlined the Cabinet principle of collective responsibility. It appeared likely that Kumaramangalam, who hailed from Tamil Nadu, was chosen to make the remark with the approval of the party’s senior leaders in order to isolate Jayalalitha in the coalition. The remark also stemmed from the perception in the party that she had no option but to continue to support the BJP-led coalition.
The Cabinet decision came as a shot in the arm for Jayalalitha, who held an emergency meeting of her party in Chennai the same day. She decided that Thambidurai and Janarthanam would resign from the Cabinet the next day. She said that the party noted with pain that a Cabinet meeting was hurriedly convened although it was known that the AIADMK Ministers were out of Delhi. “In the 50 years of our democracy, never has a Cabinet met with the single-point agenda of slighting an ally that is responsible for the majority that the Government has thus far enjoyed in the Lok Sabha,” she said.
Jayalalitha added that she would discuss with political leaders in Delhi the possibility of creating “structures that will protect national interest and ensure that all Indians feel safe and (are) able to make progress in all spheres of endeavour.”
At the ADMK general council meeting in Chennai on April 5, members spewed venom at the BJP and the ADMK’s erstwhile allies in Tamil Nadu, such as Vaiko, Vazhapadi K. Ramamurthy and S. Ramadoss. At the ADMK meeting, the prospect of Jayalalitha becoming the future Prime Minister was also discussed
On April 6, Subramanian Swamy met Jayalalitha in Chennai and reportedly apprised her about the Congress (I)’s reluctance to strike at that point. The Congress (I) leaders felt Sonia Gandhi was averse to taking the initiative to topple the Government until Jayalalitha withdrew support to it. Swamy also told her that the Congress (I) might hesitate to move a no-confidence motion against the Government when Parliament met on April 15. She could set the ball rolling by withdrawing support at the earliest, he indicated.
In the event of a trial of strength, Subramanian Swamy told her, the Government was bound to collapse. The ADMK, the Rashtriya Loktantrik Morcha, the Left parties and the Congress(I), and a few smaller parties, would together be able to muster a strength of 271 members in the Lok Sabha, whereas the BJP-led alliance would have only 254 seats - so went the calculation. Parties such as the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), the Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which had not made up their mind, had a total of 16 MPs together, and even if this figure was added to the strength of the BJP and its allies, the Opposition would outnumber the ruling alliance by one vote.
Subramanian Swamy thus persuaded Jayalalitha that withdrawal of support before Parliament met would force Vajpayee to seek a vote of confidence. Swamy also apprised Jayalalitha about the confusion in the Congress (I) on whether it should try and lead a coalition government or support from outside an alternative government.
Subramanian Swamy’s meeting with Jayalalitha coincided with yet another attack on the ruling coalition by her. She said that Advani and Fernandes were lax in protecting national security. While she flayed Fernandes for allegedly preventing the interception by the Navy of vessels carrying suspected terrorists, she termed as unpardonable Advani’s inattention to the developing security threat. She also said that Advani failed to act on vital information about intensified terrorist activity in Tamil Nadu.
Specifically, she claimed that she had informed Advani and Fernandes on October 9 last year that some operatives linked to Osama Bin Laden (the Afghan millionaire who has been accused of masterminding terrorist acts in various parts of the world) had infiltrated Tamil Nadu. Around 200 terrorists, trained in camps in Afghanistan, had entered the southern States, she claimed. The information was suppressed and follow-up action was not taken, she added. She further alleged that emissaries of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam had access to senior Cabinet members, and that an individual who was an LTTE agent in Tamil Nadu had recently met a senior Cabinet Minister in Delhi.
The Prime Minister delayed the acceptance of the resignation letters of the two ADMK Ministers, leaving open the possibility of a patch-up. At the same time, on April 7 the BJP challenged Jayalalitha to withdraw support to the Government and accused her of extracting a promise from the Congress(I) that the DMK Government in Tamil Nadu would be dismissed if the Congress(I) formed a government at the Centre. Vajpayee forwarded the resignation letters to the President after two days.
Subramanian Swamy met West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu on April 8 in Calcutta, to “seek his wisdom and guidance” on forming an alternative government. Basu made it clear that he was not a candidate for the Prime Minister’s post, while Subramanian Swamy said he carried no such request to Basu. The objective of the meeting appeared to be to pave the way for him and the ADMK to participate in the new government.
On April 9, the ADMK announced its decision to withdraw from the coalition’s Coordination Committee. Party chairman V.R. Nedunchezhiyan and senior office-bearers, in a joint statement, said that the decision was in “furtherance of Jayalalitha’s goal of speedily ensuring a political structure that treats all citizens equally irrespective of region, religion and caste, so that all feel secure and safe.”
In a sharp attack on BJP hardliners, the ADMK accused them of taking the country back to the medieval era, and claimed that their abuses and attacks would not deflect her party from its resolve to give India a government that was both just and effective, in the shortest possible time. The ADMK repeated Jayalalitha’s allegation that the Government was promoting terrorism and accused Advani and Fernandes of patronising the LTTE in Tamil Nadu. It said that the BJP hardliners were not pleased with the condition that the ADMK had put at the time of forging the alliance that its support would depend on the BJP giving up sectarian demands such as building the Ram temple in Ayodhya, the repeal of Article 370, and the enactment of a uniform civil code.
The ADMK insisted that the dismissal of the DMK Government was not the issue. National security was the issue, especially the demoralisation in the armed forces following the shabby treatment of senior officers and the denial of the best quality equipment.
The BJP dismissed the ADMK’s resignation from the Coordination Committee as being of no consequence. Apart from the ‘unauthorised’ request of Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi to Jayalalitha over the phone to continue her support to the Government, the party did not send any emissary to Chennai, as it had done in the past, to placate her. Instead, Vajpayee and Advani publicly sought the DMK’s support, indicating that all doors of negotiations with Jayalalitha were closed”.
And what transpired at the national executive session of the BJP in Panaji (Goa) then was reported in various dailies, a compilation of which is as follows:
“Even while not shutting doors on the troubling Jayalalitha of the AIADMK, the Bhartiya Janata Party has decided to end dependence on her by resorting to a quick head-hunting of MPs to face any eventuality, including the threatened no-confidence motion, in Parliament.
The BJP leaders go from here on Sunday after three days of the national executive session “with confidence that we shall remain in power as the leaders gave hints of the strategy to survive with or without Jayalalitha and nobody felt necessary to let them spell out the strategy,” a party ideologue said. The strategy worked out Saturday night by the BJP leaders, after getting Jayalalitha’s ultimatum, involves half a dozen party leaders quickly establishing contacts with MPs of the opposition parties to muster the number necessary to frustrate the Opposition designs.
The BJP does not want to tell Jayalalitha to get lost but the confidence in its coalition government surviving even without her was spelled out by general secretary and
spokesman M Venkaiah Naidu by pointing out that her blackmails would not work any longer.
“The Government cannot, will not and shall not run by conditions,” he said in response to the three demands she raised on Saturday for continuing the support -- reinstatement of sacked Navy chief Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, dismissal of Defence Minister George Fernandes and a Joint Parliament Committee (JPC) probe into Bhagwat’s dismissal and his charges of corruption in the defence deals.
As a part of the strategy, the BJP would no longer send emissaries to talk to Jayalalitha to placate her as Naidu affirmed at his Press conference: “What is the need to persuade her? No need. On what issues? What use persuading on the same issues which have been settled after discussions in the coordination committee (of the ruling alliance) at which she also aired her views and ultimately endorsed the Government’s decision to sack Admiral Bhagwat?”
The anger within the BJP rank and file over Jayalalitha’s tantrums washing out the gains that the party should derive from the Vajpayee Government’s achievements was reflected during discussion on the political resolution at the closed-door meeting on Friday when Dr J K Jain is reported to have burst out wondering why the party stalwarts behaved like cowards before Jayalalitha who was nothing more than “kothe par baithi ek randi.” There were, however, immediate strong protests from Minister of State for Sports Uma Bharti and several others at use of such abusing language and BJP President Kushabhau Thakre is believed to have intervened to advise restraint in “our language and not forget that we cannot wish away compulsions of the coalition politics.” The Tamil Nadu delegates could not immediately understand what Dr Jain said in Hindi but they too stressed that the BJP cannot grow in their state if the party continues to give undue importance to Jayalalitha.
Naidu was careful at his Press conference in not saying anything that can be provocative to Jayalalitha as he repeatedly stressed that “the AIADMK is still in our coalition and so I am not ready to react now.” He was, however, quite upset when asked about Jayalalitha’s charge that the BJP had back-stabbed her. “The BJP has no history of back-stabbing. We will not criticise our allies. ... We will discuss everything in coordination committee and in Cabinet meetings.... I don’t understand meaning of back-stabbing,” Naidu angrily said”.
Jayalalitha’s one-point demand was the dismissal of the DMK government then and withdrawal of corruption cases against her. Media reported in March 1998, “The night before the Lok Sabha passed the Railway Budget, there was panic in the ruling BJP circles. Senior leaders were worried stiff about Jayalalitha’s next move. On two successive days her men in Parliament staged a walk-out from the Lok Sabha, protesting against Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s failure to dismiss the M Karunanidhi government in Tamil Nadu. Jayalalitha herself had sent a missive to Vajpayee complaining against ‘harassment” by the DMK government. She blamed the Centre for failing to protect her from the “campaign of vilification” which Karunanidhi had supposedly launched.
“Amma’s fax message, coupled with dire signals from intelligence sources, kept the BJP leaders on tenterhooks throughout the night. The buzz was that Jayalalitha’s emissary had stitched up a deal with the Congress, which was now ready to pull down the BJP-led government. The United Front too was eager to back a Congress-led government, although the Communists wanted prior knowledge about the prime ministerial candidate.
Strangely, even as Vajpayee took upon himself the task of placating Jayalalitha -- the two had a long telephonic conversation -- the Congress leadership developed cold feet. Sonia Gandhi was persuaded that a Congress-led coalition too would be hostage to Jaya’s tantrums. In double quick time, the Congress abandoned the move to force an adjournment motion on the temple issue in Parliament. It also resiled from its earlier stand to pull down the Vajpayee government with Jayalalitha’s help!
A chastened Jayalalitha has now agreed to be on her best behaviour for some time. The AIADMK MPs believe that Vajpayee has assured her that he would dismiss the Karunanidhi government at the end of the Budget session. Since the government would do no such thing even at the end of the session, it is a safe bet that the imperious empress of Poes Garden would resume her hostilities in July when the current session is scheduled to end”.
This was the painful record of Jayalalitha playing a crucial role in the government formation at the Centre and bringing it down, the nation witnessed in 1998-99. Later the suave gentleman Vajpayee told the Tamil weekly ‘Kumudam’ in July 1999, that Jayalalitha’s demands were only the dismissal of the then DMK government and withdrawal of cases against her, which he did not oblige. In frustration the veteran politician declared, “The worst mistake I committed in my public life was aligning with Jayalalitha. I will not repeat the mistake in the rest of my life”.
For the sake not more than one seat in Tamil Nadu let the CPM please their benefactor as they want but let them not indulge in threatening the nation of a nightmarish future by projecting Jayalalitha for an important factor in the future arrangement at the Centre. The nation cannot afford to risk the costly experiment (of 1998-1999) again!
