Friend or foe?

It was bound to happen. It does not take unduly long for AIADMK chief J. Jayalalitha8217;s friends to turn into her foes. Especially, if they carry the logic of the let-the-law-take-its-course line a trifle too far. Or, when Article 356 does not appear to be among their articles of faith. Officially, it was neither of these provocations that prompted the nasty snub administered to Sonia Gandhi in Villupuram. It is a very plausible theory that what made the Congress president a loner on the Tamil Nadu platform was the indiscretion of a lesser party leader. Jayalalitha would have none of a joint rally with her Congress counterpart reportedly after provision of further proof by Manmohan Singh that he is far from a full-fledged politician. The former Finance Minister, currently a reserve prime ministerial candidate as well, could not have cemented the Congress-AIADMK alliance by talking in a television interview of a cover-up relating to corruption cases against her in the early days of the Vajpayee government whenthe Law Minister was a staunchly loyal Thambidurai. For lesser offences were the Prime Minister8217;s own meetings on his visits to the state pointedly and repeatedly boycotted by the Puratchi Thalaivi even when her party was a major participant in the ruling coalition. Sonia Gandhi and the Congress have no cause for surprise. They can have none in the days to come either, particularly if the alliance serves its electoral purpose.

It is a warning to them that Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee voices when he recalls that doing political business with Jayalalitha was 8220;the most painful period8221; of his political life. Hopefully, what pained him and his political camp was not only the series of pinpricks administered by the southern ally. What should have caused greater unease and deeper anguish were the string of compromises into which the government leadership was forced. There is no way the rest of the coalition, especially the party heading it, can disown responsibility for the crude attempts at interference withthe normal course of law. And, it was an open secret that the refusal to dismiss the DMK government was at least partly because of the extreme difficulty of doing so in the existing conditions. This is a point for the Manmohan Singhs of the Congress to note and ponder. No party can ally with Jayalalitha and pretend that it can get away without paying the price. There will be few takers for the claim that such an alliance can be free from obligations of an obnoxious kind. An unabashed recognition of this reality will perhaps be preferable to any hypocritical case for strictly number-based stability.

Even a somewhat unpolitician-like Manmohan Singh could not have been entirely unaware of the implications of the brief he carried repeatedly on his missions from 10 Janpath to Poes Garden. It may be double trouble for his party, which has struck a very analogous deal with Bihar8217;s Laloo Prasad Yadav. And it may merely be a matter of time before the AIADMK leader, who has rediscovered the BJP8217;s communalism, torevert to the theme of Sonia Gandhi8217;s foreign origin and her inexperience to rule the country. The larger, long-term problem will remain for the country to resolve: how to ensure that the era of coalitions does not become the age of blackmail as a way of political life.