Patricia Mukhim
This week has seen a lot of high drama with allegations and counter allegations by the Mukul Sangma and DD Lapang camps. But what was most surprising was how NDTV got hold of a personal email written by the CM to his mentors Sonia G and Rahul G about his government being in danger. Instead of accusing NDTV Dr Mukul should have taken on the AICC, who sources claim are very close to NDTV. But that leak was a Congress ploy to show to the world that BJP is up to its old tricks of destabilising Congress Governments. Did it work? I don’t think such naïve tactics would. What has to happen must happen.
Then came the Election Commission notification vindicating the KHADC PN Syiem’s stance that being both MLA and MDC and a CEM at that is not violative of the office of profit clause. Now as a non-political person who expects certain duties and responsibilities from both the MLA and MDC, I personally feel that concentrating all political resources in one person is dangerous. Besides there is a conflict of interest when an MLA is also an MDC because suppose the District Council has passed a law and the same MDC sitting as an MLA rescinds that law under Para 12 (A) of the Sixth Schedule then how would that look? Did the Election Commission go into this aspect? But for now Mukul Sangma’s woes seemed to have piled up.
The errors began with the nomination to the GHADC. By depriving Conrad Sangma and appointing a nondescript relative of his wife’s (Shelma D Shira) who does not enjoy the confidence of even the Congress party. The campaign for the Tura Lok Sabha seat appeared to be not that of the Congress Party candidate Dikkanchi D Shira versus Conrad Sangma of the Nationalist People’s Party (NPP), but it was pitched to look like Chief Minister, Mukul Sangma’s solitary challenge – a sort of battle for survival for him; one that would test whether he is the undisputed leader of Garo Hills. To me, Dikkanchi Shira was a proxy candidate for Dr Sangma. I wonder why the Congress is so devoid of alternative leaders that it has to bank on the Mukul Sangma family each time a Lok Sabha election takes place. A question to ask is: Do the members of the Congress Party in Garo Hills have voice? Are they allowed to voice their thoughts? Is Dr Sangma too overbearing for them to even venture to speak up? Are they afraid of being silenced by a CM who believes he knows everything about everything and therefore has no patience to listen to those who are slower on the uptake? Isn’t this also true of the manner in which cabinet meetings are conducted? Even in the Assembly, it is the CM who has all the information about his colleagues’ departments and gets up to answer whenever they flounder. Leadership does not mean doing everything for your colleagues; it means helping them to come to their own because each one has his level of competence and native wisdom.
Hence when genuine Congress workers find that their voices are not heard, they distance themselves from the proceedings. Only sycophants remain because they are looking for their pound of flesh. This sycophancy is spilling all over social media. Sycophancy is what destructs leaders because they are not open to being told that the road they are riding on is fraught with danger. So on the issue of dissidence in the Congress camp, Congress sycophants including those holding important offices in the Party who are expected to know better, blame the media for creating a non-existent rift in the Party. They also blame the media for insurgency and claim that if not for the media insurgency would not get such a fillip. Listening to these rants you begin to wonder if the media is doing wrong when it reports murders, kidnapping and extortion by militants. So whose side are these Congress party workers on? The side of the insurgents or those who have lost their family members to insurgent outfits and suffered abuse and violence at their hands! Do Congress supporters want media to suppress these gross human rights abuses because Garo Hills must be insulated from bad press? I would have thought that those who work for a political party represent the aspirations of the people but evidently they represent their own selfish interests.
In an article “Sycophancy is ever-present in Indian politics” (LiveMint Jun 2, 2016), Vikram Sinha elucidates how sycophancy is written in the DNA of the Congress. He points to the West Bengal polls, where immediately after the results were declared all the 44 Congress MLAs signed a declaration of unqualified allegiance to the party which naturally means the Nehru-Gandhi family – Sonia and Rahul. And while Congress rivals made fun of this imbecilic show of loyalty (where the one who initiates the move hopes to be amply rewarded), sycophancy cuts across party lines in India.
We don’t see such overt display of sycophancy in the tribal states of the North East but it is catching up. The irony is that leaders can make out sycophants a mile away but they encourage them because they hear so much of negativity about themselves in the media and among rivals that they need to hear something good even if that is fake. Now that sort of leader who can’t handle criticism is no leader. He/she is a self-styled leader. A leader who is not insecure would invite his critics and hear them out and check if what they have to say is borne out of prejudice or of real concern about issues. Trust me you will not find such critics within political parties (a) because they do not have the breadth of knowledge and evidence-based studies to engage effectively with the Chief Minister (b) because they don’t want to be seen as critics. Naturally the CM then has no one to point out his mistakes. He does not care about bad press because most of his constituents don’t read English. And as one who has never lost an election since he first contested in 1993, he is rightly proud of his achievement. But humility has its place.
When the Congress suffered an unprecedented loss in the Tura by-polls the party should have immediately closed ranks and dissected what went wrong. After all, anything can happen in an election. A study should have been commissioned to an independent agency to tell the Congress which of its strategies backfired and which worked. But again that is only C if Congress leaders have the appetite for the truth. To my mind, the Congress big-wigs did not think it worth their while to campaign for Dikkanchi Shira. Neither Rahul nor his mother came to Garo Hills to lend their support. On the other hand a united opposition with the backing of the BJP whose leaders actively campaigned in Garo Hills won the votes for Conrad Sangma. There is no denying that Conrad got a lot of sympathy votes but he is also more suited to take on the role of a Lok Sabha MP than Dikkanchi Shira. I don’t intend to demean the lady, but we all have our levels of competence and people have the right to judge us by that. Some voters even felt that setting up Dikkanchi is an insult to their intelligence. So the Congress needs introspection instead of trying to rock the boat now. And by the way we all hazarded a guess that Conrad was winning. How could Dr Sangma not see that coming?
In the present game of one-upmanship it is Congress insiders who don’t seem to know where their loyalties lie. Each one is out to extract his/her pound of flesh. With such people around Dr Mukul Sangma does not need the BJP to rock his Government. However, this is an old malady of the Congress Party in Meghalaya. It is a ritual enacted times without number with leaders flying in and out of Delhi to convince the High Command that they would make a better leader. Sources in Delhi tell us that most often these state leaders hardly get to meet Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi and that the latter is least interested in what happens in Meghalaya. At the moment his focus is Uttar Pradesh! So we have to take with a pinch of salt the statements that Congressmen trot out from Delhi.
Now for some inexplicable reason Sonia G seems to have more faith in Vincent Pala to help lick the Party’s wounds in Meghalaya. And Pala did not even campaign for Dikkanchi during the elections. He was busy travelling abroad! Is there any logic here?
The combined opposition would love to take over the reins of government with two years to go before the next elections. But the combined opposition “combined” in Garo Hills because they have no foot-hold there. Even here they are riddled with inherent contradictions on the leadership issue. The BJP would find it hard to understand Meghalaya’s rare political physics which defies even Einstein’s Theory of Relativity where mass which is otherwise constant can only be moved by light. That light of leadership which could effect a split in the Congress and wean the Independents, is missing. It has always been missing. So Government change now looks inevitable since Himanta has his job cut out. But politics is an uncertain game. Enemies today are friends tomorrow, all for the sake of power. So there you go….the game of musical chairs has only just begun.