The importance of being Sonia
The Opposition needs a central figure as a binding force
Mayawati’s attack on the Congress Party, specifically its senior leader Digvijay Singh, and announcement of her Bahujan Samaj Party’s 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 blame.
It is unlikely that she will change her mind – the BSP is already fighting the elections in Chhattisgarh with Ajit Jogi’s Janata Congress Chhattisgarh party – although stranger things have been known to happen. It is just as unlikely that 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 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. The alliance between the Samajwadi Party and the BSP is one such. This, though, is a messy option, and a risky one. In a firstpast-the-post system , a simple mathematical analysis will make it clear that the only way Opposition parties can compete with the BJP is by combining vote share. 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,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. 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. 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.