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Monday, May 16, 2005

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Opinion - News Analysis

Acrimony in Parliament

Inder Malhotra

Now, in Parliament, political differences have turned into personal animosities.

IN THE Western world, Friday the 13th is considered inauspicious, indeed scaring. Surprisingly, this belief has not found acceptance in this superstition-saturated country. Even so, there can be no gainsaying that on May 13, a Friday, Parliament's budget session did end on a melancholy note, as underscored by the parting remarks of not only Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Speaker Somnath Chatterjee but also Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat.

There is, of course, another way of looking at the acrimonious boycott of Parliament by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, the principal Opposition. Thanks to it, claim some stalwarts of the United Progressive Alliance, several crucial pieces of legislation — such as the Right to Information Bill and the Weapons of Mass Destruction and their Delivery System (Prohibition of Unlawful Activities) Bill — could be enacted speedily. Otherwise, these would have been delayed unduly. There is substance in this, but laws passed and decisions approved by Parliament in the absence of the bulk of the Opposition cannot have the same legitimacy as those adopted by the whole House.

Hopes that the 12-week interval between now and the start of the monsoon session might help in defusing the present tensions between the two sides so that Parliament can revert to normal functioning when it reassembles were delivered a severe blow as the two Houses adjourned. This was so because of the Government's dual decisions that infuriated the BJP and its allies no end. The first was its rejection of the Phukan Commission's report that had given the former Defence Minister and NDA convener George Fernandes a "clean chit" and asking the Central Bureau of Investigation to investigate 15 defence transactions that the Commission had "not looked into." The second was the Government's resolve to hold an inquiry — the "nature and scope" of which have yet to be decided — into the sale of Centaur hotels at a time when Arun Shourie was Disinvestment Minister in the Vajpayee Cabinet.

Unsurprisingly, BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley and others went ballistic and angrily accused the Government of playing "politics of vendetta" and "witch-hunt." The spokespersons of the UPA, in both South Block and the residence of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, are bound to reply in kind. Consequently, the verbal uncivil war that has gone on for too long already is almost certain to escalate, not wind down.

Whatever the politicians might or might not say, at the popular level there has been much greater criticism of the inquiry against Mr. Shourie than that against Mr. Fernandes. One reason for this is the former Disinvestment Minister's high reputation. People have also commented that, unlike Mr. Fernandes, he is welcoming the inquiry and asking the Government to expedite it. In the case of the defence deals, Justice S.N. Phukan had blotted his copybook by partaking of the Defence Ministry's hospitality, including the use of an IAF aircraft from the VVIP transport squadron. This has enabled his critics to question the impartiality of his findings in his incomplete report.

To all this, one must add two other facts to drive home the low depths to which not just parliamentary functioning but the entire system has been brought down. The first is the sordid drama staged by Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati in the Rajya Sabha — and by her vociferous supporters in the Lok Sabha — over the CBI's inquiry into the allegation that she possesses assets disproportionate to her known sources of income. Only a few weeks earlier she had demanded that the CBI, and not the investigation department of the Uttar Pradesh police, take over the case of the murder of one of her party men, committed allegedly by an associate of the State Chief Minister! For its part, the CBI had no compunction, under the direction of its then political masters, to withdraw all charges against Ms. Mayawati in the Taj Corridor case. The credibility of the premier investigative agency has therefore taken a hard knock.

Of the second outrage, Railway Minister Lalu Prasad's attempt to hurl mud on the Election Commission, in collaboration with a civil servant on the verge of retirement, the less said the better. To revert to the impasse in Parliament, the former Prime Minister, I.K. Gujral, ruefully remarked to me that never before were things so bad as now. Parliament thrived on differences, dissent and debate. But this time around, political differences had turned into personal animosities.

Even normal social relations between leaders of the two sides had broken down (at least partly because of differences with each of the two mainstream parties, according to me). Asked as to how the present crisis could be overcome, Mr. Gujral implied, rather than stated explicitly, that whoever might be responsible for the mess, in straightening it out the responsibility of those in the driving seat was greater.

Tailpiece

Heard at a Women's rally: "Delhi has always been the crime capital. Must it now become the rape capital, too?"

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