As Anna Hazare’s hunger strike has wracked New Delhi, there has been a subtle but crucial shift in who leads the official response: from the government’s technocratic clampdown last week to the Congress party’s search now for a political compromise.
Today, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was preparing to hold an “iftar” party, the traditional feasting that follows the day-long fast during the Ramzan season. Mr. Hazare’s health indicators had begun to fluctuate worryingly. And Congress officials were desperately seeking a deal on legislation that would create the institution of a national ombudsman, called the Lokpal, in a form that would satisfy both sides and persuade Mr. Hazare to eat.
“The party had no choice but to take charge if it wanted to rescue itself,” said one Congress leader as the party has been battered by civil society’s first serious challenge to the economic reform it helped unleash two decades ago and unnerved by the political attack mounted by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party in Parliament.
“The party watched helplessly as Manmohan Singh’s technocratic managers seemed unable to deal with Hazare’s rising demands,” he said. First, he contended, they showed arrogance by rejecting Hazare’s Lokpal draft out of hand, arguing that only the government’s version would be brought forward in Parliament. Then they demonstrated contempt by insisting that neither the lower bureaucracy, the office of the prime minister, nor the judiciary could be included in the draft Bill, he added.
Adding pressure on the party to act more decisively was the impending return of Congress President Sonia Gandhi. After surgery abroad, she is expected to return to New Delhi later this week. The Congress leader suggested Mrs. Gandhi would be horrified to see that the Congress-led government had bungled on such a massive scale in her absence.
Three days ago, Congress officials opened discussions with Mr. Hazare’s key aides, according to a Congress official with knowledge of the party’s strategy. (Hazare aides didn’t respond to calls for comment.)
For a while, at least, Mr. Hazare’s rock-hard stance seemed to soften. The night before he addressed the gathering crowed Tuesday morning at the Ramlila grounds, Mr. Hazare acknowledged to his aides that some anti-Congress slogans the crowd had begun to chant (like “Sonia murdabad” or “Down with Sonia”) could affect the non-partisan character of his anti-corruption movement, according to the same Congress source.
To increase the chances of the discussions bearing fruit,
Congress changed the leaders who had so far dealt with the crisis, such as Home Minister P. Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal, minister of human resource development and telecommunications.
Instead, the party’s man-for-all-crises, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, law minister Salman Khurshid and the Congress party member of parliament from east Delhi (who is also the son of Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit) were brought in to liaise with Team Anna.
Rahul Gandhi, Congress general secretary and Sonia Gandhi’s son, also held three unpublicized meetings with the Prime Minister in his mother’s absence, according to the Congress leader. The last of the three was as part of a party core group which included Sonia’s political secretary Ahmed Patel. It met Mr. Singh late Tuesday night to formulate the party’s response, in the hope of setting a new tone in discussions with the Anna camp.
The Congress leader said that the manner in which Mr. Hazare’s aides were dealt with in the unsuccessful effort to find a Lokpal compromise with the government earlier this year had played a large role in the deterioration of relations. “They were not objecting to the content of the discussions as much as to the manner in which they were being spoken to,” he said.
The new approach was epitomized by the tone of the Prime Minister’s letter that pleaded with Mr. Hazare to call off his fast. The PM promised to fast-track the Hazare version of the Lokpal bill to allow it to appear before the parliament’s standing committee, which prepares legislation before it reaches a Parliamentary vote.
As of Wednesday afternoon, as some form of compromise appeared likely for the first time since Mr. Hazare set up camp, the face-saving looked like this: The Congress party would agree to put the office of the prime minister within the ambit of the Lokpal, a move it had vociferously rejected so far but had been demanded by Team Anna. The Lokpal would be empowered to investigate corruption against members of Parliament, subject to the Constitution. And the anti-corruption wing of the Central Bureau of Investigation as well as the Central Vigilance Commissioner would be merged with the Lokpal.
On its part, the Hazare camp would agree that the judiciary could stay out of the Lokpal bill on the condition that a separate judicial accountability bill, along with the Lokpal, were passed by Parliament in this session.
A key unresolved difference relates to the inclusion of the lower bureaucracy in the Lokpal. The Congress party interlocutors contended the inclusion would spawn a parallel bureaucracy, but the Hazare camp insisted that bribe-taking and bribe-giving most affected the poorer sections of society whose government interactions tend to be with the lower orders.
Congress party officials said they hoped an all-party meeting Wednesday would support the government’s view that Parliament, and not civil society, was supreme in the formulation of laws.
“But the responsibility must remain with us. The Congress was supposed to be the government of the ‘aam admi,’ the common man. We should not have allowed matters to reach fever-pitch,” the Congress leader said.
Today, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was preparing to hold an “iftar” party, the traditional feasting that follows the day-long fast during the Ramzan season. Mr. Hazare’s health indicators had begun to fluctuate worryingly. And Congress officials were desperately seeking a deal on legislation that would create the institution of a national ombudsman, called the Lokpal, in a form that would satisfy both sides and persuade Mr. Hazare to eat.
“The party had no choice but to take charge if it wanted to rescue itself,” said one Congress leader as the party has been battered by civil society’s first serious challenge to the economic reform it helped unleash two decades ago and unnerved by the political attack mounted by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party in Parliament.
“The party watched helplessly as Manmohan Singh’s technocratic managers seemed unable to deal with Hazare’s rising demands,” he said. First, he contended, they showed arrogance by rejecting Hazare’s Lokpal draft out of hand, arguing that only the government’s version would be brought forward in Parliament. Then they demonstrated contempt by insisting that neither the lower bureaucracy, the office of the prime minister, nor the judiciary could be included in the draft Bill, he added.
Adding pressure on the party to act more decisively was the impending return of Congress President Sonia Gandhi. After surgery abroad, she is expected to return to New Delhi later this week. The Congress leader suggested Mrs. Gandhi would be horrified to see that the Congress-led government had bungled on such a massive scale in her absence.
Three days ago, Congress officials opened discussions with Mr. Hazare’s key aides, according to a Congress official with knowledge of the party’s strategy. (Hazare aides didn’t respond to calls for comment.)
For a while, at least, Mr. Hazare’s rock-hard stance seemed to soften. The night before he addressed the gathering crowed Tuesday morning at the Ramlila grounds, Mr. Hazare acknowledged to his aides that some anti-Congress slogans the crowd had begun to chant (like “Sonia murdabad” or “Down with Sonia”) could affect the non-partisan character of his anti-corruption movement, according to the same Congress source.
To increase the chances of the discussions bearing fruit,
Congress changed the leaders who had so far dealt with the crisis, such as Home Minister P. Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal, minister of human resource development and telecommunications.
Instead, the party’s man-for-all-crises, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, law minister Salman Khurshid and the Congress party member of parliament from east Delhi (who is also the son of Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit) were brought in to liaise with Team Anna.
Rahul Gandhi, Congress general secretary and Sonia Gandhi’s son, also held three unpublicized meetings with the Prime Minister in his mother’s absence, according to the Congress leader. The last of the three was as part of a party core group which included Sonia’s political secretary Ahmed Patel. It met Mr. Singh late Tuesday night to formulate the party’s response, in the hope of setting a new tone in discussions with the Anna camp.
The Congress leader said that the manner in which Mr. Hazare’s aides were dealt with in the unsuccessful effort to find a Lokpal compromise with the government earlier this year had played a large role in the deterioration of relations. “They were not objecting to the content of the discussions as much as to the manner in which they were being spoken to,” he said.
The new approach was epitomized by the tone of the Prime Minister’s letter that pleaded with Mr. Hazare to call off his fast. The PM promised to fast-track the Hazare version of the Lokpal bill to allow it to appear before the parliament’s standing committee, which prepares legislation before it reaches a Parliamentary vote.
As of Wednesday afternoon, as some form of compromise appeared likely for the first time since Mr. Hazare set up camp, the face-saving looked like this: The Congress party would agree to put the office of the prime minister within the ambit of the Lokpal, a move it had vociferously rejected so far but had been demanded by Team Anna. The Lokpal would be empowered to investigate corruption against members of Parliament, subject to the Constitution. And the anti-corruption wing of the Central Bureau of Investigation as well as the Central Vigilance Commissioner would be merged with the Lokpal.
On its part, the Hazare camp would agree that the judiciary could stay out of the Lokpal bill on the condition that a separate judicial accountability bill, along with the Lokpal, were passed by Parliament in this session.
A key unresolved difference relates to the inclusion of the lower bureaucracy in the Lokpal. The Congress party interlocutors contended the inclusion would spawn a parallel bureaucracy, but the Hazare camp insisted that bribe-taking and bribe-giving most affected the poorer sections of society whose government interactions tend to be with the lower orders.
Congress party officials said they hoped an all-party meeting Wednesday would support the government’s view that Parliament, and not civil society, was supreme in the formulation of laws.
“But the responsibility must remain with us. The Congress was supposed to be the government of the ‘aam admi,’ the common man. We should not have allowed matters to reach fever-pitch,” the Congress leader said.
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