Kingmaker8217; Surjeet is back again

Surjeet is carrying on his ageing shoulders a triple burden of convincing Sonia to head an alternative government, persuading Third Front leaders not to stake claim this time round and changing the anti-Congress mindset of the Left cadres.

The Left has come to the conclusion in the last two years that the challenge of a BJP on the rise can only be met by a non-BJP formation in which the Congress plays a central role.

But the Surjeet thesis, propounded for two years now, was not simply that the Third Force mustjoin hands with the Congress to contain the BJP but that it must be the Congress which can walk but not without crutches, and therefore would be dependent on the Third Force. The Left leaders used to talk about doing business with the Congress which would be down to a 100-125 figure in the Lok Sabha.

This thesis went awry with the ascent of Sonia Gandhi as Congress president and the Congress seemed to be gaining everywhere including the north. It had seemed at one point that the longer the BJP government lasted and succumbed to the disadvantage of incumbency, the stronger would be the Congress.

He has told regional satraps, who have come into their own in the nineties, that it would be in their interest for the Congress also to taste the bitter pill of running a coalition government.

The experience, even short-lived, could rein in its upward climbing graph and make it more the first among equals. The only party, mainstream or otherwise, which has not so far been tainted by a coalition experience at theCentre is the Congress.

Not only does Surjeet face the task of persuading the Congress to go in for government formation now, he has to bring around elements in the Third Force that they should not stake their claim to head a government this time, if his thesis is to take off.

He is trying to counter the reservations of Laloo Yadav and Mulayam Singh who feel that the installation of Sonia Gandhi as Prime Minister is going to hurt their interests in Bihar and UP. The argument is simple: anyone who gets into the chakravyooh of coalition politics does not come out unscathed.

Those who have headed coalition governments in the last 20 years, whether it was Morarji Desai or Charan Singh, V.P. Singh or Chandra Shekhar or H.D.Deve Gowda or I.K. Gujral, suffered a steep decline in their fortunes after their stints as Prime Minister, which lasted anything from just over two years in the case of Morarji to five months with Chandrashekar.

The tallies of their parties came down from three figures to poortwo figures. The fact is that in today8217;s fractured politics incumbency has become a big disadvantage, and this is not going to leave Sonia untouched.

The experience of all these men has also shown that in running coalitions, keeping both enemies and friends happy overtakes everything else. And unlike Sonia, these were men who had built up relationships in the opposition politics over 30 years. On the other hand, without a Congress majority, Sonia Gandhi will have to rely on a coterie loyal to her.

Surjeet has not yet fully convinced the two Yadavs but he is confident of bringing them around to the view that the Third Force has everything to gain in the long run even by offering to support a Sonia-led Congress Government from the outside.

Surjeet also faces the task of changing the mindset of two decades in the cadres of the Left parties, who have been fed with anti-Congressism for over two decades. It is no surprise that the Forward Bloc and the RSP have expressed their reservations about the Congressforming a government, though Jyoti Basu and Surjeet are confident of bringing them around.

Committed as they are to secularism and a federal polity, the Left parties have in the past been at the receiving end of a strong Congress at the Centre. There was precious little they could do when their government was dismissed in Tripura, for instance.

The CPM leader is probably the only one who can conceive of having the AIDMK as a dominant partner in an alternative government and yet try and prevent the DMK from straying away. Only a Harkishen Singh Surjeet can paper over these contradictions and also give them an ideological garb. But Surjeet may well be in for a googly from Sonia Gandhi.