In the wake of the mauling of the Congress in the recent Lok Sabha election, many experienced top-rung leaders of the party have pointed out that getting party chief Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul, the party’s vice-president who ran a forgettable election campaign with the help of amateurs rather than seasoned party colleagues, to resign was not the solution to the party’s current woes.
At the formal plane, it was outgoing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who articulated this view at the meeting of the Congress Working Committee on Monday. All things considered, this is a pragmatic view whose utility cannot be overlooked. Since the 1969 split in the Congress, the party faction that went with Indira Gandhi and her family inheritors has gone through ups and downs, but remains in business.
The opposite faction has long been history. In these 45 years, the party was led by the Nehru-Gandhis for the most part, but for the five-year period when P.V. Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister and Sitaram Kesri the party president. When this phase ended in successive defeats, the Congress beseeched Mrs Gandhi.
Her term was a successful one on balance, leading the party to power for 10 long years. Mrs Gandhi is regarded a sober and balanced political leader of the country. Even so, when she and Rahul offered to step down at the CWC and the gathered senior leaders dismissed the idea out of hand, observers saw it as a stage-managed show.
The procedure would have been more meaningful and carried conviction with the people if the top leaders’ conclave had discussed the defeat and issued a credible revival plan to be implemented within a reasonable time-frame. The way the CWC meet ended, it gave the impression that a nominated body was avoiding rocking the boat.
Establishing an elected CWC is important of course, as some have argued, but it must be properly elected by state Congress units that are themselves properly elected. Party elections all round is a time-consuming process. So, electing just the CWC right away could serve a short-term expediency.
But no less important for now, the elected Congress MPs can give a lead by zeroing in on their Lok Sabha leader through a proper vote. That is an immediate practical way that makes for accountability, of which the Congress vice-president spoke with some conviction at the CWC. He could regain the high ground if he declined to be a candidate for this election. It is time the party did some out-of-the box thinking.
