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Journalism of Courage
It was coalition politics as B-grade suspense thriller. Right till the moment when the curtains finally came down on the B.S. Yeddyurappa’s spectacularly short-lived government on Monday afternoon, the JD(S) kept its ally, and everyone else, guessing. Though H.D. Deve Gowda’s party had issued a whip to its MLAs to vote against the confidence motion brought by the BJP-led government earlier in the morning, no one could afford to take it for its word. After all, the JD(S) has notched an enviable record for the political somersault. First it pulled out of the alliance government it formed with the Congress and entered into a coalition with the BJP. Twenty months later, it reneged on the power-sharing pact with the BJP. It came back to the BJP a month later, only to change its mind yet again on Monday.
It was ‘coalition dharma’ as its own caricature. Ever since multi-party governments have come to stay at the Centre, serial efforts have been made to stabilise the arrangements forged between parties. Be it the common minimum programme that binds all allies at the outset or the coordination committees that take care of the problems as and when they erupt later, coalition politics has been on a learning curve. But the JD(S)’s brinkmanship in Karnataka demonstrates the fragility of the new coalition culture. It is a reminder that institutions are only as good as the men who run them. Gowda’s 12-point MoU, which became the final reason for his party snapping ties with the BJP, was no common minimum programme. It was a mercenary and unconstitutional charter of demands by a party that obviously thinks it can monopolise the loaves and fishes of power while pretending to share it.
In Karnataka, it was also the BJP’s will to power bordering on masochism. So enamoured was the party of the prospect of its first chief ministership south of the Vindhyas that it allowed the JD(S)’s blackmail politics full play. At many moments, the party could have called off the high political farce — but didn’t. As the national party in the equation, it was not mindful of the fact that it had much more to lose than the JD(S). Finally, the fall of the Yeddyurappa government spells good news for the people of Karnataka. They can now hope for more stable government after fresh elections.
