Open Forum
New Delhi, 17 December 2013
Electoral Alliances
A SERIOUS COMEDY OF
ERRORS
By Dr S Saraswathi
(Former Director,
ICSSR, New Delhi)
The making, unmaking, and remaking of electoral alliances
going on in India
in recent times looks like a comedy but with serious political consequences. Just
the other day, the DMK in Tamil Nadu became the latest actor in this comedy.
Its supremo M Karunanidhi stated there will be no tie-up with the Congress for
the 2014 elections: “We suffered a lot in the Congress alliance. It created a
bad name for us.” However, there was silence whether it would extend its hand to
the other single largest party, the BJP.
Indeed, with the decline of one-party dominance at the Centre,
alliances of various types have come to stay both during pre-poll and post-poll
periods. This trend is getting stronger with the formation of coalition Governments
that have been able to run their full or near full terms.
In a way, this may be interpreted as an important phase in
the history of the Congress. The party, that hitherto represented an amalgam of
various political schools, finds itself giving space to emergence of
independent political parties with rather narrow and pointed political
interests. In other words, the country is facing the inevitable political
fallout of a plural society, a huge population with strong regional interests
and sentiments working a parliamentary democracy of the British model.
The Congress, which was pretending and professing to
represent all regions, sectors, religions
and groups in itself had to face the reality within a few decades after Independence
that it is fast becoming one among many parties. The recent Assembly elections in
five States is undeniably one such pointer.
At the Centre, the Party was failing in the politics of consensus.
As a result, India’s
parliamentary democracy was eventually to develop a multi-party system. In the
federal set up, this system gets more and more complicated as years roll. And,
the politics of alliances is a feature of multi-party politics.
Electoral alliances and coalition governments have political
relations, but the constituent partners in each, even under the same leader, are
not always identical. These need not be so if we understand party politics in India.
Recall in the late 60s, electoral alliances were successful
in many State elections. Non-Congress governments were formed in Bihar, Kerala,
Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, and West Bengal
which encouraged the politics of alliances in subsequent decades.
Importantly, it was the politics of alliances that ended the
Congress rule in 1967 in Tamil Nadu. Anti-Congress parties of all shades were
brought together with the DMK as the dominant partner. The rightist Swatantra
and the leftist Communists were partners in this alliance.
The idea of alliance emerged when some leaders realized that
a large number of candidates in multi-member constituencies were winning
elections on the support of minority votes under the first-past-the-post system.
A candidate’s victory in a constituency or a party’s victory in a General
election is possible with opposition polling majority votes.
The politics of electoral alliances was initiated mainly
against the Congress. It had then a negative objective of defeating the
Congress. At the Centre, the first major challenge to the Congress regime came
from the “Grand Alliance” in 1972 soon after the split of the Congress in
1969. It did not succeed.
The first successful challenge to the Congress came in 1977. However, it was not an alliance technically,
but a merger of certain non-Congress parties mainly the Jana Sangh, Bharatiya
Lok Dal, Congress (O), Socialists, and the Young Turks within the Congress
under a common name the ‘Janata Party’.
Henceforth, alliances and merger were both going on before
elections. In 1988, the Janata Dal was formed by the merger of Jan Morcha,
Janata Party, Lok Dal, and Congress (S) in order to pool their electoral power.
This step drew some of the regional parties in their fold like the DMK, TDP,
AGP and led to the National Front of five parties.
Technically, VP Singh’s National Front government was the
first coalition Government formed out of pre-poll alliance of different parties
by seat sharing and post-poll pact for coordinated arrangement for governance.
This pre-poll alliance without any organizational set up of the
convener worth mentioning won a simple majority and formed the Government at
the Centre with outside support of the BJP, and the Communist Parties. It was defeated on the withdrawal of the
support of the BJP in 1990 on the question of L K Advani’s arrest during his ‘rath yatra’.
Chandrasekhar, who took over from V P Singh with a modified
alliance and outside support of the Congress was also ditched in a short time by
the latter wanting to take over. It was a period of breaking parties and
shifting partners for the sake of gaining seats of power - an inevitable result
of the importance of numbers in a majoritarian rule.
The United Front was a post-poll alliance of parties opposed
to both Congress and the BJP. Its emergence was due to the fractured verdict of
1996 elections and hence the partners had no common promises to their voters.
They all claimed that the electoral verdict was in favour of secular,
democratic values. The grouping was able to formulate a common policy statement
and a common minimum programme intended to strengthen the principles of
democracy, secularism, federalism, and social justice. Its approach was towards
greater involvement of people in all its endeavours.
However, the United Front government suffered the weakness
of post-poll alliance of parties to share power, and dependence on external
support. In politics, such support can never be reliable. Arithmetic calculation
of party support thus becomes the main consideration in deciding issues.
Post-electoral alliances have taken various forms –
conditional and unconditional support, outside support, issue-based support,
participation in government, neutrality or abstention from voting against one’s
own stated positions, and even extending support against articulated party policy
to save a friendly government and/or to prevent an opponent coming to power.
The last mentioned form of support in the above list is heard
frequently in recent years to justify crucial parliamentary support to the
Congress. The plea is prevention of what is dubbed as “communal forces” gaining
strength. On one occasion, a party even voted against its own stand to avoid
being seen in the company of the BJP, with which it was in agreement on the
issue.
Post-poll alliance politics has really degenerated into a politics
of rank opportunism. It has widened the gap between the voters and their
representatives in Parliament. The allies have no commitments to the voters or
to their constituencies to be honoured by loyalty to their ally. The voters are
unaware of the party leanings of the party/candidate to which they vote. They
do not even know which way the party they had supported would vote on any
important issue in Parliament. The smaller the parties and fewer their members,
the greater is the risk of the voters.
Post-poll alliance thus appears to be an undemocratic
feature in a democracy. The voters have a right to know what their candidates and
parties stand for and a right to expect that they do not defect from their
stated positions without an explanation to the electorate. Will the political
parties pay heed? – INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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