By Patricia Mukhim
Mr Champion Sangma the arrested GNLA supremo recently made some interesting comments. He said the GNLA would assist the Congress party in the next election. He has also said that he would contest the 2013 election. But whether his writ still runs in the GNLA is the moot point. Its not that Champion has made some great revelation of an unknown truth! Militants and politicians have always shared a symbiotic relationship. This is the only reason why militancy cannot be stamped out in Meghalaya or elsewhere. In any case, Champion is not the first to offer the services of his armed outfit to the Congress. In the past, politicians in the Khasi & Jaintia hills hobnobbed with the HNLC and received overt and covert help from them during the elections.
I found it interesting that the UDP has taken serious note of Champion’s declaration. The party is now seriously contemplating snapping ties with the Congress. But this is such a tried and tested ploy of the UDP that it fools no one. Here is a party that has been a partner in crime with the Congress and also the NCP for a full five years (or nearly there) and now wants to emerge holier than thou. Sorry friends but the muck sticks. Hence this old ploy of using whitewash at the eleventh hour is not going to work like Nirma Washing Powder. If there is anything to blame the MUA Government for, the UDP has to take a 50:50 share. That’s called partnership – another word for coalition.
The UDP has two ministers on board. One has not created any ripples possibly because there is no scam in his departments or even if there are, they are not interestingly enough for the media to pry into. The media and most RTI activists love big budget departments like PWD, PHE, Power, Urban Affairs, Community and Rural Development (whose budget has substantially increased in recent times). The other senior UDP guy has committed a series of faux pas such as labelling some women activists as serpents out to get him with their poison fangs. His non-starter Meghalaya Mineral Policy is the biggest ‘ant in his pants.’ Although like Pilate he tried to wash his hands off the issue, it has come unstuck. The Chief Executive of the Government took umbrage and fired his own set of salvos at this attempt to turn the Mineral Policy into a political football being kicked from UDP to Congress and back. Or a blame game if you like.
It took the Congress party nearly a week before they could react to Champion’s kite-flying pastime in jail. MPCC chief DD Lapang laughed it off as a pipe dream of the media. The Government, meanwhile, is angry that Champion is not sufficiently gagged while being taken to be produced before the court. Hence police have been extra cautious that Champion does not shoot his mouth off like a loose canon. I think the former cop is enjoying the discomfiture of the government and his three minutes of fame. His agenda is meanwhile being intelligently framed. Whoever he receives his counsel from is certainly a smart cookie. One wonders though as to what Sohan Shira feels about this whole burlesque. Is he with Champion and therefore with the Congress? Is he a lone ranger? Does he have political affinities? If so which party is he inclined towards? Or, the mercenary that he is, would he rig the polling booths of whichever candidate pays him the bigger amount?
And if the GNLA professes to be with the Congress with or without the Congress’s admittance of the fact (if Champion is in love with the Congress what right does the party have to deny him that love), then who will the ANVC support? Knowing how antagonistic the two are towards each other it is a given that they cannot be on the same side of the fence. So who else do we have apart from the ‘babe in the words’ NPP which split from the mother amoeba called the NCP? No militant group can afford to remain neutral during the elections. The stakes are too high and money is what makes militancy an option. Like someone said, for a contestant, winning is not everything; it is the only thing. Going by the theory of political economy, candidates today invest in elections because they hope to win and thereby drive the economics of Meghalaya. Winning is important becomes it is easier for them to garner the economic resources of the state for personal use by leveraging their power and status.
Lest we be accused of communalism, let us not be too hasty in condemning Champion and his aspiration to political office. Why have we forgotten Julius Dorphang also a renegade who had a change of heart when the going got tough and who is today being provided security by the state, lest his former colleagues bump him off. What an irony indeed that a man with the antecedents of a common criminal and belonging at one time to a banned outfit should today have the last laugh. He is being cultivated by the Congress or at least by a section of senior Congressmen and will be contesting the 2013 elections. Should Julius Dorphang not face trial for all the killing, extortion and other heinous crimes including the daylight gunning down of business persons who could not cough up the amounts demanded? Dorphang may not have used the gun himself but he is a senior mentor of the cadres in the HNLC. I therefore find it totally abhorrent that such guys should continue to intimidate different institutions demanding contract jobs as if it is their birthright!
If Dorphang has not gone through the due process of law why is Champion in jail? What sort of justice is this? Some readers have expressed strong views against former militant leaders contesting elections. And they have a point! We used to smirk at Bihar and Uttar Pradesh as states where the goonda raj rules the roost. Are we in Meghalaya any better? Then there are others who argue that in Mizoram, the Mizo National Front (MNF) a banned militant outfit surrendered and engaged in talks with the Centre, following which the Mizo Accord was signed. The MNF chief, Laldenga later became the chief minister of Mizoram in a very smooth transition of power facilitated by the Congress at the time. But we ought to admit that Laldenga, Zoramthanga and others like Bijoy Hrangkhawl of the Tripura National Volunteers (TNV) who all spent time together in the jungles of former East Pakistan and later Bangladesh were men of conviction. Militancy is Mizoram is framed on the issue of the famine that affected the state. It was a genuine cause and the manner in which the Mizos fought the Indian state was also a fair fight. How can we compare our own militia with men such as Laldenga and Zoramthanga? Like they say, these men might have been rebels but they were honourable rebels. They did what they did for the people of Mizoram and there was never any doubt about that. Does the HNLC stand for the rights and interests of the Khasi (Hynniewtrep) people? Do they have our mandate to do so? Have they ever taken our views as to what sort of political future we envisage for ourselves? Have they critiqued the present skewed models of development and presented an alternative?
Those who profess to be disciples of Che Guevera, keep copies of his books and invest in his ideologies must also to learn make the sacrifices he had without flinching. This goes for the GNLA too. This outfit and the ANVC before that has shed innocent blood and killed people mercilessly on allegations that they are police informers. These are men who do not believe in the rule of law themselves and use their kangaroo courts to deliver summary justice. I cannot imagine how they will behave if they are elected to become lawmakers. It is simply unacceptable that people who do not want to subject themselves to the law should aspire to become legislators.
But a word of caution to politicians who are desirous of using these mercenaries to win elections! People ought to reject a candidate who uses militant outfits to further his/her political ambitions. In fact, I am one who does not believe in the idea of ‘talking’ with these outfits because there is nothing to talk about with gun-toting oppressors of human rights and with people who do not believe in the tenets of democracy. There is only one way to deal with militants and that is the same way that the state deals with other criminals. Let’s not give legitimacy to militancy in Meghalaya. I am sure Mr Champion Sangma who is a trained cop understands this rationale only too well.