Wednesday, July 23, 2008

‘Slave’ breaks free



‘Slave’ breaks free

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080723/jsp/frontpage/story_9588766.jsp
MANINI CHATTERJEE
New Delhi, July 22: The muted war cry — so be it — uttered a year ago was fleshed out into a long and stirring victory speech on the floor of the Lok Sabha today as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh lashed out at both the Left and Right and sought to establish himself as a strong and visionary leader in his own right.
In the face of constant interruptions, the Prime Minister gave up trying to read the speech in full. But even in cold print, Manmohan Singh shone out in his new avatar – angry, combative, resolute, confident and unshaken in his conviction that the nuclear deal was “a giant step forward to lead India to become a major power centre” of the world.
He took on L.K. Advani at the outset but Prakash Karat — who went unnamed — was the target of a much more lethal attack. “Our friends in the Left Front should ponder over the company they are forced to keep because of miscalculations by their General Secretary,” the Prime Minister said, a politically loaded comment aimed at widening the wedge within the CPM on the issue of voting along with the BJP.
He also made it a point — as he had when he moved the confidence motion yesterday — to “recall with gratitude the guidance and support I have received from Shri Jyoti Basu and Sardar Harkishen Singh Surjeet.” That he was seeking to contrast their pragmatism with Karat’s ideological intransigence was not lost on anyone.
Attacking both the BJP and the Left for seeking to destabilise his government, he said: “When I look at the composition of the opportunistic group opposed to us, it is clear to me that the clash today is between two alternative visions of India’s future.”
While the UPA “and our allies” saw India as a self-confident and united nation, “the opposite vision is of a motley crowd opposed to us who have come together to share the spoils of office to promote their sectional, sectarian and parochial interests.”
And rubbing in the Left’s discomfiture of voting along with the BJP, he added: “Our Left colleagues should tell us whether L.K. Advani is acceptable to them as a Prime Minister candidate. Shri L.K. Advani should enlighten us if he will step aside as prime ministerial candidate of the Opposition in favour of the choice of UNPA.”
Turning the Left’s charge that he had “betrayed” them on the nuclear deal on its head, the Prime Minister declared that “they wanted me to behave as their bonded slave”.
All he had asked the Left, he said, was “please allow us to go through the negotiating process and I will come to Parliament before operationalising the nuclear agreement. This simple courtesy which is essential for orderly functioning of any government worth the name, particularly with regard to the conduct of foreign policy, they were not willing to grant me. They wanted a veto over every single step of negotiations which is not acceptable. They wanted me to behave as their bonded slave.”
Deftly side-stepping the charge that he had violated the coalition dharma by insisting on a deal that was not mentioned in the common minimum programme, the Prime Minister said: “The nuclear agreement may not have been mentioned…. However, there was an explicit mention of the need to develop closer relations with the USA but without sacrificing our independent foreign policy.”
His attack on Advani was more personal but less political than on Karat. Advani, he said, had often been abusive — and referred to the epithets “the weakest Prime Minister,” a “nikamma PM” et al. Making out Advani to be a man hungry for power, he said: “To fulfil his ambitions, he has made at least three attempts to topple our government. But on each occasion his astrologers misled him.”
Taking a swipe at the old man in a hurry, he went on to say: “This pattern, I am sure, will be repeated today. At his ripe old age, I do not expect Shri Advani to change his thinking. But for his sake and India’s sake, I urge him at least to change his astrologers so that he gets more accurate predictions of things to come.”
He went on to mock Advani’s record as a Hindutva leader and home minister — mentioning in one breath the terrorist attack on Parliament, the destruction of Babri Masjid and the Gujarat riots which had all taken place under his watch. It was at this point that he deftly changed the direction of his attack, asking the Left to ponder over the decision to stand with the BJP because of the “miscalculations by their general secretary”.
Apart from the sharp political broadsides, the Prime Minister dwelt at length — as he has on many occasions before — on the multi-hued merits of the nuclear agreement, on the achievements of the UPA government in the area of social welfare and education, and on the government’s continued commitment to an “independent foreign policy.”
He ended on an emotional note, recalling the first 10 years of his life “in a village with no drinking water supply, no electricity, no hospital, no roads and nothing that we today associate with modern living.”
And, as though answering critics who have accused him of selling out to “US imperialism”, the Prime Minister said, “Sir, my conscience is clear that on every day that I have occupied this high office, I have tried to fulfil the dream of that young boy from that distant village. Whatever I have done in this high office I have done so with a clear conscience and the best interests of my country and our people at heart. I have no other claims to make.”


Prime Minister Manmohan Singh flaunting his newly acquired skill at flashing the V-sign before entering Parliament on Tuesday. Later, delivering a speech that could not be completed in the din, the Prime Minister tore into L.K. Advani, saying the Opposition leader described him as “the weakest PM, a nikamma PM”. Picture by Rajesh Kumar
New Delhi, July 22: At the end of a day as darkly theatrical and stirring as yesterday was dull, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh emerged unruffled master of the game, winner of the riskiest wager of his life by 275 to 256.
A “magnificent victory” he termed it, flaying both the BJP and the Left with uncharacteristic assurance as he sped off from Parliament in a blaze of arc lights and cheering that drowned daylong acrimony.
The Left benches fell sullen upon the announcement of the verdict, the NDA quickly dissolved into the lobbies, the treasury became an eddy of congratulation around Manmohan and Sonia Gandhi.
Ten MPs had abstained from the vote and over 10 cross-voted — mostly from the BJP — to give the UPA a cushion of numbers few had credibly predicted.
The Prime Minister had stood to close the two-day trust motion, already confident of victory and unfazed by the raucous echoes of an unseemly mid-afternoon spectacle in which three BJP MPs emptied two bagfuls of currency — rubber-banded wads of thousand rupee notes — on the records table, claiming it an advance from the Samajwadi Party to abstain from the vote.

The dramatic, and unprecedented, manoeuvre from the BJP benches left the House stunned and forced several uproarious adjournments. Despite repeated assurances from Speaker Somnath Chatterjee that he would look into what he called a “most unfortunate and sad” matter, the BJP protest wouldn’t relent.
As leader of Opposition L.K. Advani sat watching the unruly turn of his benches, party leaders and backbenchers alike entered the well of the House shouting “Pradhanmantri beimaan hai, Pradhanmantri istifa do” when Manmohan rose to speak. But unable, in the face of the BJP’s grating and uncontained protest, he calmly handed his speech to record officers.
And when it came to a division, BJP lead benches were in gripe again, demanding the Prime Minister’s departure from the Lok Sabha on the ground that he isn’t a member. “The Prime Minister can’t be here, several ministers can’t be here, they should be asked to go,” the BJP’s V.K. Malhotra was heard complaining to the Speaker, who immediately overruled him. All the while, Manmohan sat motionless and wryly smiling behind his front desk.
Having staked his government on the Indo-US nuclear deal, he hadn’t shrunk from a fight on the floor of the Lok Sabha; he wasn’t about to be deprived of savouring the moment of victory. The last fortnight may, in fact, have seen a radical transformation in Manmohan — from an “apolitical technocrat” unprepared to sully his hands in the necessities of realpolitick to a hard-boiled combatant who was prepared to employ every trick in the book to wrestle, and overcome, opponents.
Following the withdrawal of the Left, the Congress had gone into overdrive trying to muster a majority, even as the government fast-tracked the nuclear deal in order to meet international deadlines. Keen that the deal not be seen as the initiative of a minority government, the Prime Minister himself played a role in bringing the Samajwadi Party on board. But if wooing the Samajwadis had been a smart and timely political realignment to neutralise the loss of the Left, there was also inducement at play.
The race for numbers had been a see-saw battle in which the government and the Congress — aided by the backroom abilities of players like Amar Singh — matched their adversaries move for move. Multi-pronged strategies — overt and covert — were employed.

Amar Singh not only had the task of minding an uncertain Samajwadi Party flock being aggressively poached by Mayavati, he had also taken upon himself to go out and hunt. If he lost the high-profile Shahid Siddiqui to Mayavati, he bagged Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh of the BJP.
Manmohan’s party and government did their own bit. Shibu Soren, for instance, was offered a cabinet berth and more in return for his five MPs. The renaming of the Lucknow airport after Chaudhary Charan Singh was seen as a lure to Ajit Singh and his three MPs. The deal with Soren worked, the jury is still out on how Ajit Singh voted.
The government’s opponents, of course, allege, that its “dirty tricks department” went even beyond; some of that, it claimed, floated up onto the floor of the Lok Sabha in the form of cash.
Earlier in the day, Brajesh Pathak of the BSP had alleged that the CBI had sent an officer to his flat with a message that Mayavati will “face the consequence” if her party MPs did not vote with the government in the trust move. “The government is nakedly using money and intimidation,” Prabhunath Singh of the JDU angrily alleged after the BJP MPs — Ashok Argal, Mahavir Bhagora and Faggan Kulaste — had unloaded the cash on the floor.
Speaker Chatterjee, however, declined to accept repeated demands from both the NDA and the Left to institute a House committee probe into the allegations, saying only that he had taken “serious note” of the matter and that “nobody found guilty would be spared”.
The Left benches fell sullen upon the announcement of the verdict, the NDA quickly dissolved into the lobbies, the treasury became an eddy of congratulation around Manmohan and Sonia Gandhi.
Ten MPs had abstained from the vote and over 10 cross-voted — mostly from the BJP — to give the UPA a cushion of numbers few had credibly predicted.
The Prime Minister had stood to close the two-day trust motion, already confident of victory and unfazed by the raucous echoes of an unseemly mid-afternoon spectacle in which three BJP MPs emptied two bagfuls of currency — rubber-banded wads of thousand rupee notes — on the records table, claiming it an advance from the Samajwadi Party to abstain from the vote.

The dramatic, and unprecedented, manoeuvre from the BJP benches left the House stunned and forced several uproarious adjournments. Despite repeated assurances from Speaker Somnath Chatterjee that he would look into what he called a “most unfortunate and sad” matter, the BJP protest wouldn’t relent.
As leader of Opposition L.K. Advani sat watching the unruly turn of his benches, party leaders and backbenchers alike entered the well of the House shouting “Pradhanmantri beimaan hai, Pradhanmantri istifa do” when Manmohan rose to speak. But unable, in the face of the BJP’s grating and uncontained protest, he calmly handed his speech to record officers.
And when it came to a division, BJP lead benches were in gripe again, demanding the Prime Minister’s departure from the Lok Sabha on the ground that he isn’t a member. “The Prime Minister can’t be here, several ministers can’t be here, they should be asked to go,” the BJP’s V.K. Malhotra was heard complaining to the Speaker, who immediately overruled him. All the while, Manmohan sat motionless and wryly smiling behind his front desk.
Having staked his government on the Indo-US nuclear deal, he hadn’t shrunk from a fight on the floor of the Lok Sabha; he wasn’t about to be deprived of savouring the moment of victory. The last fortnight may, in fact, have seen a radical transformation in Manmohan — from an “apolitical technocrat” unprepared to sully his hands in the necessities of realpolitick to a hard-boiled combatant who was prepared to employ every trick in the book to wrestle, and overcome, opponents.
Following the withdrawal of the Left, the Congress had gone into overdrive trying to muster a majority, even as the government fast-tracked the nuclear deal in order to meet international deadlines. Keen that the deal not be seen as the initiative of a minority government, the Prime Minister himself played a role in bringing the Samajwadi Party on board. But if wooing the Samajwadis had been a smart and timely political realignment to neutralise the loss of the Left, there was also inducement at play.
The race for numbers had been a see-saw battle in which the government and the Congress — aided by the backroom abilities of players like Amar Singh — matched their adversaries move for move. Multi-pronged strategies — overt and covert — were employed.

Amar Singh not only had the task of minding an uncertain Samajwadi Party flock being aggressively poached by Mayavati, he had also taken upon himself to go out and hunt. If he lost the high-profile Shahid Siddiqui to Mayavati, he bagged Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh of the BJP.
Manmohan’s party and government did their own bit. Shibu Soren, for instance, was offered a cabinet berth and more in return for his five MPs. The renaming of the Lucknow airport after Chaudhary Charan Singh was seen as a lure to Ajit Singh and his three MPs. The deal with Soren worked, the jury is still out on how Ajit Singh voted.
The government’s opponents, of course, allege, that its “dirty tricks department” went even beyond; some of that, it claimed, floated up onto the floor of the Lok Sabha in the form of cash.
Earlier in the day, Brajesh Pathak of the BSP had alleged that the CBI had sent an officer to his flat with a message that Mayavati will “face the consequence” if her party MPs did not vote with the government in the trust move. “The government is nakedly using money and intimidation,” Prabhunath Singh of the JDU angrily alleged after the BJP MPs — Ashok Argal, Mahavir Bhagora and Faggan Kulaste — had unloaded the cash on the floor.
Speaker Chatterjee, however, declined to accept repeated demands from both the NDA and the Left to institute a House committee probe into the allegations, saying only that he had taken “serious note” of the matter and that “nobody found guilty would be spared”.

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