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Karnataka election 2008: issues and prospects

The election to the Karnataka Assembly held a year before schedule has by all accounts been a closely-fought contest. Its outcome will have a crucial bearing on State and Central politics.

First, the results will determine the future of secular politics in the State. If, as some poll surveys have suggested, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) gets the required 113 seats in the 224-member House, then, for the first time, it will form a government on its own in a southern State, a goal the party set itself in 1991 when its vote share increased dramatically to touch 28 per cent. With the ‘Gujarat model of development’ as its declared objective, the BJP in power can be expected to alter the secular fundamentals that have underpinned the policies of all non-BJP State governments. This will have profound implications for politics and the communal climate of the State.

Secondly, if the results throw up a hung Assembly, there will be yet another period of political uncertainty. Significantly, all major parties have said they will not do business with one another. The BJP national president, L.K. Advani, while electioneering, announced that if the party could not form a government on its own, it would sit in the opposition. Congress Election Management Committee chairman S.M. Krishna recently told a press conference that his party was not inclined to ally with the Janata Dal (Secular). JD(S) national president H.D. Deve Gowda has been reported as saying that his party will not repeat the mistake of joining hands with the BJP. Faced with a real situation, however, party priorities might change, and the State may for better or worse be headed for another phase of coalition politics.

Thirdly, the results of the last State election held before the Lok Sabha elections in 2009 will be keenly watched as a barometer of public opinion on the policies of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre. The incessant rise in the prices of essential commodities since this January and its debilitating impact on a major section of the electorate appear to have overshadowed other economic and election issues. It has been used as an effective campaign weapon by all non-Congress parties and is the single most important factor that has worked against the Congress in these elections.

The political players – the Congress, BJP and JD(S) — are seeking to better their 2004 performance. In the 2004 election, the BJP won 79 seats (31 per cent of the vote share), the Congress 65 (35 per cent) and the JD (S) 58 (21 per cent). Though the mandate was fractured, it represented a clear rejection of the policies of the ruling Congress dispensation that had launched its own version in the State of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance’s ‘Shining India’ campaign. The BJP rode the wave of the popular opposition to the Congress rule and emerged as the single largest party.

In the present elections too, it is the BJP that has emerged as the pole, not the least because of its high voltage campaign and adroit use of the media. The party’s campaign started on a rather weak wicket, with “political betrayal” by the JD(S) as its central theme. This appeal for public sympathy fell flat as the BJP was entirely complicit in the opportunistic and unprincipled power struggles that surfaced in October 2007, after Chief Minister H.D Kumaraswamy refused to hand over the reins to B.S. Yeddyurappa of the BJP as per the power-sharing agreement between the two parties.

Nevertheless, the BJP campaign soon picked up, even as that of the Congress and the JD(S) floundered. The party announced its list of candidates and manifesto well before the others. The Congress campaign, energised with the induction of the former Chief Minister, S.M. Krishna, as chairman of the Election Management and Coordination Committee, soon dissipated into infighting and factionalism. To keep the peace, the Congress high command decided to allot campaign posts to its State leaders. M. Mallikarjun Kharge was made chairman, Election Committee of the Pradesh Congress Committee. Siddaramaiah was made Campaign Committee chairman and C.K. Jaffar Sharief, Manifesto Committee chairman. Candidate selection was a messy and long drawn-out affair, with those denied ticket organising street protests which in some cases even turned violent.

The BJP meanwhile shifted its campaign focus to the spiralling prices and its pet theme of internal security. The recent terror attacks in Jaipur and the bomb blast in a Hubli court just before the second phase of polling came in handy election instruments. The party has exploited the caste factor, fielding a Lingayat as its chief ministerial candidate, and drawing second-level Lingayat leaders into the party to gain the support of this dominant community. Buoyed by exit polls that have predicted a lead for the BJP, Mr. Yeddyurappa with somewhat premature confidence announced, at a crowded press conference in Bangalore a day before the last phase of polling, that his party would win 135 seats.

Though late-starters on the campaign trail, the Congress and the JD(S) can count on their strong electoral bases in different regions: the JD(S) in the Old Mysore region, where in 2004 it won in 36 out of the 86 constituencies in the 11 districts; and the Congress in both the Old Mysore region and north Karnataka. With a common election strategy, the JD(S) and the Congress could together have set the agenda and course of the elections. The disunity of the secular opposition has aided the BJP and will have a bearing on the post-poll situation. In such a closely fought election, the role of the smaller parties like the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Samajwadi Party (SP), Janata Dal (United), the two left parties, and others, will be crucial in ministry formation in a hung Assembly.

With a complex mesh of State and national issues driving the political preferences of the electorate, the election process, much like in 2004, has provided no pointer to the results. May 25 will decide the form and political colour of the popular government that takes office after six months of President’s Rule.

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