Return to the voter

The letter that Mulayam Singh Yadav wrote to President K.R. Narayanan affirming that the Samajwadi Party is equidistant from the Congress and the BJP puts paid to the Congress party8217;s desire to form a government.

Sonia Gandhi8217;s claim, made to the President, of having the support of 272 MPs had already been proved hollow by the RSP and the Forward Bloc8217;s reiteration that they would not support a Congress government. Her inability to buttress her claim with letters of support from an adequate number of MPs within a period of two days, which she herself sought, is enough ground for Narayanan to reject her claim. West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu and his party having already turned down the idea of a Basu-led government, the possibility of a government supported from the outside by the Congress, too, appears remote. Even if the BJP coalition continues to retain the support of 269 members and some more MPs may even like to support it for no other reason than to avert an immediate election, the stigma of adefeated government will haunt it forever. Besides, the propriety of allowing it to face the House once again will always be questioned. There is no certainty that such a government will be able to ensure a modicum of stability. The bitterness in the relations some political leaders have for each other and the irreconcilability of their differences rule out the chances of a viable alternative government emerging from the present House. All this leaves the nation with the inescapable conclusion that polls have become unavoidable. Any other decision by the President will be open to question.

That frequent elections will do more harm than good cannot be gainsaid. Except for one or two parties and a few rich MPs, elections entail heavy expenditure which is beyond their means. It is this fear that is at the root of their reluctance to find an electoral solution to the present political impasse. However undesirable elections may be, they cannot be averted beyond a certain point. Even in the past when the nationwas confronted with similar situations, elections were ultimately the only way out. It is often argued that an immediate election will result once more in a hung House.

While such a possibility cannot be ruled out in view of the fractious nature of the polity, the results of various by-elections and assembly elections held during the last one year show that the voters have become politically mature and have given a decisive verdict. In fact, a clear preference for a two-party system as a result of some sort of polarisation, which is already underway, is also discernible in the results. This certainly bodes well for the democratic system. More so as it was in the name of averting elections that some monstrous governments were imposed on the nation in the past. The experience with the laissez-faire Chandra Shekhar government which mortgaged the country8217;s gold reserves without compunction is too recent to be forgotten. The people will shudder at the thought that such an entity can be brought into being in thename of deferring elections. Let there be no mistake: elections are definitely preferable to such unholy experiments.