The importance of being Sonia

For the opposition parties to have a chance in 2019, they have to get together. And for them to get together, someone will have to play the mediator.

Mayawati’s statement on Wednesday, attacking the Congress Party, specifically, its senior leader Digvijay Singh, and announcing her Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) decision to fight the assembly elections in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh alone, had an interesting sentence that pretty much absolved Congress president Rahul Gandhi and his mother and former party president Sonia Gandhi of any of the blame she was directing at the party.

As is Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee. And Telugu Desam Party chief and Andhra CM N Chandrababu Naidu sees himself as a peer of Sonia Gandhi, and is likely to be more amenable to talking about seat sharing with her than with anyone else. (PTI)

It is unlikely that she will change her mind regarding these two states – the BSP is already fighting the elections in the third, Chhattisgarh, with Ajit Jogi’s Janata Congress Chhattisgarh party – although stranger things have been known to happen. It is just as unlikely that Ms Mayawati’s decision will have no bearing on the 2019 parliamentary elections; at the least, it indicates that forming a grand alliance to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will not be easy.

There are two possible outcomes. One, the opposition parties agree to defer a decision on a grand alliance till after the elections, choosing, instead, to forge locally relevant partnerships that can help them. The alliance between the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the BSP, is one such. This, though, is a messy option, and a risky one too. In a first-past-the-post system such as our own, a simple mathematical analysis will make it clear that the only way opposition parties can compete with the BJP is by combining their vote shares. Then, there’s also the issue that at one level, a pre-poll alliance indicates commitment and a post-poll one, opportunism, which, in some ways, does subvert the democratic vote.

Two, the parties somehow manage to forge a grand alliance. For this to fructify, though, as is clear from the Congress and the BSP’s experience in forging an alliance in three key states (Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan), and also from Ms Mayawati’s statement, Sonia Gandhi will have to play a central role. Indeed, when she handed over the leadership of the party to Rahul Gandhi, both Sonia Gandhi and the Congress made it clear that she would focus on the party’s alliances. In an interview with this paper, Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar said he, Sonia Gandhi, and Janata Dal (S) leader HD Deve Gowda, none of whom wanted to be Prime Minister, should serve as elder statespeople of the alliance in the making, ironing out differences between parties of various hues. Ms Mayawati, as she has already indicated, is comfortable with Sonia Gandhi. As is Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. And Telugu Desam Party chief and Andhra CM N Chandrababu Naidu sees himself as a peer of Sonia Gandhi, and is likely to be more amenable to talking about seat sharing with her rather than with anyone else.

For the opposition parties to have a chance in 2019, they have to get together. And for them to get together, someone will have to play the mediator.