When SR Bommai died last month, and he was officially condoled in Karnataka?s Legislature, the irony of the timing escaped most. It was the same day that the Janata Dal (S), led by ex-PM HD Deve Gowda, changed its mind yet again and helped BS Yeddyurappa earn his name in the history books as the shortest serving CM of Karnataka. What makes this supremely ironic is why good old Bommai is remembered these days. Once Karnataka?s CM himself, he is best remembered as the Bommai of Bommai Judgement fame, the Supreme Court ruling which decrees that a legislative majority can only be established on the floor of the house?not via letters of support, nor by MLA parades outside Raj Bhavans. As coalitions became the norm, this established the guiding principle in India.
Coming back to the ?irony?, it is just as well that Bommai was being condoled the very day it became impossible for the newly sworn-in CM to prove his majority?Bommai was most certainly ?no more?.
Political alliances, their short-termism and innate contradictions have been written about ad nauseum. But the credit for dragging the notion of an alliance to its lowest low yet must certainly go to the Janata Dal (S). By the party?s latest public posture, the younger Gowda feels a ?regional party? is the answer, as it allows one the flexibility that a national party doesn?t have.
It is a reluctance to face the electorate again that makes political parties cobble together some majority-making deal by hook or by crook, and this has led to the invention of a semester arrangement, by which two parties, regardless of their voter bases, agree to behave like colleagues who share a few months in power as coalition leader by turn.
At the close of the last millennium, the BJP, with Kalyan Singh at the helm of affairs, tried it with the Mayawati-led BSP in UP. It is another matter that the BJP CM was most reluctant to allow the BSP to complete its months in power, and the arrangement collapsed. The Congress is no stranger to the idea any more either. When the state of Jammu & Kashmir threw up a mixed mandate after its most recent election, the People?s Democratic Party (steered to a commanding position by Mehbooba Mufti) and the Congress (with big gains in Jammu) got together, and Mufti Mohammed Sayeed and Ghulam Nabi Azad decided to share the CM?s post by turn. Sure, it took weeks of conflabulations between the PDP and Congress to arrive at this agreement, and this is an acknowledgment in itself of the strains of such an alliance. The J&K partnership nearly fell through once Azad?s turn came to take charge, but, given the alternative, they managed to pull along.
The voter views such alliances with considerable suspicion, especially if the tie-up comes after the poll results are out. Pre-poll alliances, as with the Shiv Sena and BJP, RJD and Congress, or CPM, CPI, RSP and Forward Bloc, are a different matter. It is with post-poll agreements that there is a danger that a voter may feel betrayed or alienated by what she or he sees as a sort of sellout. India, after all, has seen cases where parties pretend to be in opposition of each other, so that they can maximise their draw of the vote, and then share the spoils together.
Needless to say, voters do begin to cotton on. Analysts surmise that is one reason why only Mayawati was able to pick up the anti-incumbency vote in the recent UP elections. The BJP and Congress were both seen as parties which would gravitate towards the SP for power after the elections.
Second-guessing possible post-poll coalitions has become part of the voter?s calculus. If this is sad, it is for the commentary it offers on the lost trust that a party would adhere to dearly held values and principles through thick and thin.