Party hopping

The spate of defections most political parties are now experiencing cannot be dismissed as a normal election-eve phenomenon. True, strife er...

The spate of defections most political parties are now experiencing cannot be dismissed as a normal election-eve phenomenon. True, strife erupts in almost every party during the season of ticket distribution. Denial of nomination creates more than mild discontent and the aggrieved politician sees no rationale in staying on in an outfit that promises him no reward. But what the nation is now witness to is clearly without precedent. The number of leaders who have abandoned parties of long association, some of them actually not stopping at splitting parent organisations to which they have all along sworn undying loyalty, is already a record. What makes it all the more sordid is the accompanying opportunism. The defectors have not even cared to feign political decency, even its faintest semblance. They have not felt constrained to make theirs appear a logical move into a like-minded camp, their options have not been limited at all by considerations of compatibility with principles professed thus far with polemical fervour. The reverse is no less true and the beneficiaries have not been bothered either by thoughts of conviction and credibility in their pursuit of realpolitik.

The process started, in fact, well before the announcement of the polls, with the Bharatiya Janata Party talking of the readiness of a sizable chunk of Congress members of Parliament to cross over to its side, to back its claim to form a government at the Centre. And, the phenomenon has found its most bizarre and brazen illustration in the still swelling tide of Congress influx into the BJP and its camp. In every single instance, it is a leader of hitherto loudly anti-saffron rhetoric who has displayed a dramatic change of political hue. The need for a fig-leaf has been the farthest from the minds of the party-breakers and party-hoppers, ranging from Mamata Banerjee trying to forget Babri Masjid and Rangarajan Kumaramangalam of left lineage to Aslam Sher Khan of anti-Hindutva antecedents and Ajit Panja of unflattering record as a broadcaster for a Congress regime tilting against communalism, not to mention Suresh Kalmadi of no earlier softness for the main Opposition. Vazhapadi Ramamurthy in Tamil Nadu cannot similarly vindicate the indirect alliance with the BJP implied by his pact with the AIADMK. Particularly cynical have been the Sonia Gandhi loyalists donning saffron, and even more so others among the deserters, like the Trinamul Congress leaders, who do not rule out returning home if Sonia replaces Kesri.

Only slightly less notable has been the cynicism of turncoats from the third front. Navin Patnaik, with his splinter Biju Janata Dal, is far from plausible when he talks about his father posthumously inspiring an alliance with the BJP, while Laloo Prasad Yadav8217;s new-found love for the Congress and Kesri needs no explanation. No principle has prompted P. Ramadoss to join the Jayalalitha bandwagon at the risk of breaking his Pattali Makkal Katchi. The outrage of all this is obvious. Not so, perhaps, is the obverse of the coin. The political transaction called defection blesses neither the giver nor the taker, as the BJP will do well to realise before it is too late.