It is rightly stated that politics makes strange bedfellows. The Congress – led Government in Meghalaya is so insecure that it needs the support of Independent MLAs like Julius Dorphang to continue its uninterrupted rule over the state. Hence the guarded remarks by the Meghalaya Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) President , DD Lapang when asked about the Mawhati MLA and his criminal acts of raping a minor girl on different occasions. Lapang’s statement that the law would take its own course and that he cannot make a statement at this point is at best equivocal and at worse a poor attempt to obfuscate the issue. Is Lapang inferring that Dorphang stands a chance of being acquitted of his crime after the law has taken its due course? Is he therefore belittling the statement of the minor girl who has publicly stated that she has been raped on two different occasions by Dorphang? Is he suggesting that the girl is lying or is being tutored to lie? Do we have any reason to disbelieve what the distressed and desecrated victim – a minor girl has to say? Whatever has happened to conscience? Do we always have to cite the law even while dealing with an accused who has unleashed a social plague as horrific as rape?
For Lapang and other senior Congressmen and women to come out on the streets to protest demonetisation even while remaining mute and apathetic on a more heinous crime like rape, clearly exposes the Party’s warped agenda. And when that rape is committed by no less a person than an MLA who is supporting the Party only goes to show that for the Congress, the politics of convenience trumps everything else. That the Mahila Congress has nothing to say on the successive rape cases happening with such frightening frequency in Meghalaya, reveals how disconnected and distanced its women workers are from the poor and suffering people of this state and from the women who suffer the horrors of rape. Yet this same Party will use its women members to plough the election field prior to the voting date! It’s time for the people of Meghalaya to hold the Congress Party to account and expose its double standards!