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Coalition worse confounded

If power corrupts, the prospect of power corrupts even more. And the first person to agree with this axiom would be Prime Minister A B Vajpayee who has tied himself into knots simply because his Tamil Nadu ally fancies her chances of hoisting the tricolour from Fort St George on August 15 this year. Her future has made his present miserable.

Coalition politics, Vajpayee has stressed often enough in the recent past, were a new-fangled thing as far as India is concerned, but even he would not have anticipated the kinks that he has run into.

These kinks refer specifically to AIADMK leader Jayalalitha. Although never one to hide her lamp under a bushel, there was an expectation that her stint in the Opposition would have changed her into a more reasonable, less power-hungry, individual, but it is obvious that in her case it is a case of triumph of experience over hope.

The point is, everyone knew that the BJP bandwagon was full of irascible passengers; the point also is, no one expected that the partners would start squabbling within a month of the new government taking over.

Jayalalitha, it is obvious, is going for broke. She has made her moves on the political chessboard with a forethought that Viswanathan Anand would be proud to emulate, and her checkmates would leave a Russian Grandmaster gasping in awe. Saying this is not to be interpreted as admiration for the lady's tactics or an affirmation of the way she has prevented this government from going about its normal duties, but is merely meant to highlight the singularity of Jayalalitha's purpose.

Which, if it needs reiteration, is to see the back of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government in Tamil Nadu, and holding of fresh elections which she believes would result in her replacing Karunanidhi as chief minister. To this end, no price is too high, no path too steep, no position too precarious.

Through all her exertions in pursuit of her ultimate goal, Jayalalitha has laid an elaborate web for the BJP front to ensnare itself. It all began with seemingly innocuous, and sometimes just, demands like implementing the Cauvery water tribunal's order or elevating more languages to the status of official language, but went on to include actions that would wreck the Vajpayee ministry from within.

There was nothing new in Sedapatti Muthiah's prosecution for corruption, and it was a certainty that every one of the AIADMK luminaries who are facing corruption charges will be tried for their sins of commission when they ran the state government. By asking Muthiah to resign once he was chargesheeted, Jaya has tried to use as a precedent for other members of the Vajpayee council. Jayalalitha obviously expected to extract the maximum mileage from l'affaire Muthiah, and it is a moot point if she drew up her strategy all on her own or was helped along by foe-turned friend Subramanian Swamy.

If Jaya was merely seeking the dismissal of the Karunanidhi government, it wouldn't call for much intelligence. But by focusing on the Vajpayee Cabinet at large, and on Ramakrishna Hegde in particular, the lady has given away Swamy's hand in drawing up her tactics. Nuisance value is what Swamy possesses, and nuisance is what the Madurai MP has become to the BJP front.

Vajpayee's dilemma is all the more acute, since never before in his political career has he had to balance his personal choice with what party discipline enjoins on him, as he is doing today. It is all right if you are only an Opposition leader, then restraint, honesty, and such other virtues are your natural allies. But when one is in power, that's when one is buffeted from all directions, the pressures and conflicting claims going up exponentially in case of a coalition government.

Vajpayee's basic instinct, given the situation that he is in today, would be to throw in the towel, and it is a cinch that this thought has crossed his mind not infrequently over the last few weeks. But what is holding him back is his party's, and the RSS's belief that for the BJP to expand its base it is imperative for Vajpayee to continue in office as long as possible.

But continuing in office has its concomitant pitfalls. How do you continue in office without buckling under Jaya's demands? How do you concede her demands without losing your credibility? And, on top of it all, how do you win more converts to your cause even while your credibility is slipping? These are questions that the prime minister, and his political advisor, ought to wrestle with.

The BJP is unlikely to offer itself as a sitting duck to the demolition partners Jayalalitha and Subramanian Swamy for long, and even now must be working behind the scenes to drum up alternative sources of support. Conversely, Jayalalitha is astute enough to know that her pinpricks against the government would produce the desired effect only so long as Vajpayee is depending on her for his government's survival. It is an eyeball-to-eyeball, and so far the only one to blink has been the honourable prime minister.

Both parties are buying time, and the BJP is looking for an extra commodity called parliamentary support. As the two grapple, the damage for the BJP is far greater than for Jayalalitha. For, the longer that Vajpayee and Co allow the situation to continue, larger are the holes blown in the BJP's claims of providing a stable government and an able leadership. What Jaya has shown up is that this government can be neither stable nor able, not until she wills it.

Jayalalitha functions within a limited matrix, there is nothing much for her to lose sleep over. The Tamil voter, luckily for her, has shown himself to be forgiving to the point of being amnesiac when it comes to his leader's follies, and even if the rest of the country may abuse Jaya for destabilising a government even before it settled down, who knows, going by records, Tamil Nadu may choose to forget her trespasses. She may find it a little difficult to find allies, but given the Tamilian matrix once again, it is the national parties who come knocking, not the other way round.

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Saisuresh Sivaswamy