Reactions to the BJP’s corruption charges against the MDA government range from outright denial to taunts and mocks that the Party should pull itself out of the coalition. It is indeed a peculiar situation that the BJP finds itself in. On the one hand the two MLAs of the BJP are hell bent on supping from the MDA cup because it suits their interests. On the other hand the BJP chief is going hammer and tongs at the MDA government and accusing it of corruption. The State BJP chief feels he needs build the image of the Party in Meghalaya for the next election and also for the Garo Hills District Council polls scheduled for April this year.
While the Chief Minister who also heads the National Peoples’ Party (NPP) and the coalition government has been choosing his words with care, knowing that he cannot step on the toes of a coalition partner, his Deputy has been lashing out at the BJP relentlessly. The latest salvo was fired when he said that differences within the coalition will end if BJP leaves the Government. This is unprecedented and certainly not something that one coalition partner would say to another. It smacks of a hubris borne out of a sense of invincibility. Prestone Tynsong has been elected for four consecutive terms and feels that it is natural to talk down to a coalition partner that refuses to play ball.
Interestingly Chief Minister Conrad Sangma has left it to his deputy to deal with all the flak thrown at his government. Tynsong is virtually the de-facto chief minister. He has been fielding questions on health and other subjects even during the height of the pandemic. It is true that despite his seniority Tynsong was never allowed to come into his own during the Congress regime and remained in the shadows of the then CM, Mukul Sangma. That’s something Tynsong has never forgiven or forgotten. Now that he is given a free hand in the present government he seems to have lost his bearings. His dare to former CM Mukul Sangma to contest from Pynursla, merely because Sangma pointed out that cattle smuggling and other illegalities are carried out through the Deputy CM’s constituency has brought down the level of political discourse to an absurd level.
Ironically, Prestone Tynsong forgets that the BJP-led government is controlling the purse strings in Delhi and that the Modi government is well briefed about the goings-on in Meghalaya. The BJP is biding its time to hit out at the perpetrators of corruption when the time is ripe and closer to the elections. The two BJP MLAs are not ruffled by the insults to the Party since they both believe they won because of their persona. Come elections and they could very well jump to another party.
For now, each time the CM visits Delhi he is begging for some package or the other and what Tynsong has been doing is likely to hurt the NPP-BJP ties even at the national level.