The high-decibel demand of the BJP — supported by the Left from the sidelines — for the resignation of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the WikiLeaks issue, made in Parliament on Thursday, suggests strong political motivation, but carries little conviction.
It is noteworthy that the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, who was present in the House, did not advert to the demand being pressed with such gusto, not to say a hint of drama, by her colleagues- Arun Jaitley in Rajya Sabha, who set the ball rolling, and L.K. Advani in the Lok Sabha.
This is a dead giveaway. In our parliamentary system, if the Leader of the Opposition in the directly elected House rises to ask for the Prime Minister’s resignation, the signal is that the government’s opponents have mobilised for a trial of strength, and are ready even for fresh elections.
Neither the BJP nor the Left can afford to create such a dire impression among its MPs only two-and-a-half years into the life of the present Lok Sabha.
The Left took extra care in this regard. On the allegation of Dr Singh’s government winning the trust vote in July 2008 by bribing MPs (indicated by WikiLeaks), CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat only told journalists that the Prime Minister and the Congress leadership “could not escape responsibility”. He did not seek anyone’s resignation. Nor did his colleagues in Parliament. Nevertheless, the BJP and the Left appear to have choreographed their moves in tandem.
During the Winter Session of Parliament, after the financial irregularities in the preparation for the Commonwealth Games and the Adarsh flats scam in Mumbai had come into the public domain, a leading Left source had told this writer that the effort of his party would be to target the Prime Minister with a view to tarnishing him. He had further said that this would be sought to be done in stages.
This was the way to make the government vulnerable, it was suggested. Dr Singh’s reputation for probity was the UPA government’s greatest asset. Therefore, it was thought necessary to cause a dent in it.
For the Left as well as the BJP, this appeared to have been the genesis for the demand to set up a probe into the 2G spectrum affair by a JPC by enlarging its terms of reference, and not by the PAC.
It is not fortuitous that UPA-II’s opponents did not ask for the PM’s resignation on the Commonwealth Games affair, 2G allocation, the Radia tapes, or the Adarsh flats case — issues that were of wide public concern. The Left did not choose “people’s issues”, such as steep prices of essentials, either.
The idea appears to have been to use the strategy of a thousand cuts — to try and hurt the PM’s reputation step by step, for it was hard to dent it in one shot.
The choice of the WikiLeaks story by the Opposition to make its most dramatic move is hard to understand. The matter belongs to the last Lok Sabha after which there has been a general election.
No less significantly, WikiLeaks cables are a compendium of in-house telegrams sent by American embassies to their State Department headquarters in Washington. They contain nothing more than the impression or analysis of individual US officials writing the cables. Why these should be seen as gospel or constitute “proof” is hard to understand.
The CPM, in particular, has asked for a criminal investigation into this matter. It has to ponder if American diplomatic officers can be asked to appear before investigators to defend the in-house impressions they share with their headquarters.