Front exit

The rather ambitiously named People8217;s Front 8212; ambitious because it neither had the people8217;s support nor was it much of a fron...

The rather ambitiously named People8217;s Front 8212; ambitious because it neither had the people8217;s support nor was it much of a front 8212; seems to be the first casualty of the controversy over Kalam8217;s candidature. On Wednesday, the Left parties let it be known that the outfit that bound them with Mulayam Singh Yadav8217;s Samajwadi Party SP and Deve Gowda8217;s Janata Dal Secular no longer exists, thanks to the lack of consensus within it over the NDA8217;s presidential candidate, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

While Mulayam Singh had heartily welcomed the prospect of Kalam becoming the next president of India and in fact claimed credit for having come up with his name, the Left parties have already announced their decision to field an alternative candidate for the presidential post. Therefore, while the NDA may not have covered itself with glory over the clumsy manner in which it handled the issue, it can of course draw great satisfaction from having divided the Opposition very effectively by luring an important player like the SP.

This development underlines once again the inherent fragility of political formations that are slapped together hastily for very narrow political considerations. While the People8217;s Front was ostensibly a secular front set up to counter the ideological orientation of the BJP-led government, it proved to be nothing but a re-jigging of the old United Front which had given this country two short spurts of governance, and a bandwagon of ambitious geriatrics and dispirited regional satraps. The departure of the People8217;s Front, therefore, will go largely unlamented.

However, there is a certain resonance about this collapse that tells a more important story 8212; the deep schisms within the Opposition. The Congress may have as yet not come out with its position on the NDA8217;s presidential candidate, but threading its way through the present controversy is the hostility between this party and the SP. Remember, this is not the first time that the SP had quite deliberately jumped ship. There was that summer of 1999, when it had spiked the Congress attempt to come to power after the collapse of the Vajpayee government by ensuring that Sonia Gandhi8217;s magic number of 8216;8216;2728217;8217; never materialised. That betrayal continues to run like a sub-plot through oppositional politics 8212; its latest enactment being in Lucknow, where Congress intransigence all but ensured that Mulayam Singh could not form a government in UP.

Such politics of revenge makes great theatre but it will only ensure that the country will continue to be deprived of a united Opposition, which every functioning democracy requires. For the moment, however, going by the index of Opposition disunity, the NDA8217;s Kalam missile seems to have hit the target.