It took too long to bury the hatchet

By C. Gouridasan Nair

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, NOV. 12. All's well that ends well. There are happy faces all around on conclusion of the stand-off between the Government and the Opposition in the Assembly, but there is also in the air the thought that things could have ended equally happily many days ago without wasting so many precious business hours of the House.

The Government and the Opposition would have to bear equal share of the blame for the stalemate that consumed 11 days of the Assembly's budget session. There were opportunities galore for the two sides to say `sorry about all that' and `that's alright' and get on with their respective jobs in the House. But what they did instead was to do a lot of talking and set conditions that could not be met when tempers remained frayed.

At one point of time, they also let go of a golden opportunity to shake hands and let bygones be bygones. With the Speaker also being dragged, somewhat unnecessarily, into the row, there was little possibility of the stalemate getting resolved all that easily.

As could be expected, relief is palpable among MLAs belonging to both the UDF and the LDF at the end of the stalemate. Ever since the row began, members belonging to both the sides have been losing the opportunity to use the House to draw the Government's attention to problems of the constituencies and the various organisational interests they represent.

Had the Assembly functioned normally, it would have taken up at least 60 submissions relating to diverse issues. The members would also have got the opportunity to call the attention of the Government to pressing problems of development at least two score times. And, finally, if the discussions on the demands for grants from various departments were taken up in the normal way, it would have resulted in diverse aspects of the administrative process coming under scrutiny.

More than the Government, it is the Opposition which has paid a heavy price for the stand-off. It has missed the opportunity to put the Government in the dock on many a burning issue, some of them involving alleged corruption.

Come to think of it. It was good that the Assembly was adjourned for the last 10 days or so. It has helped the healing process. The intervening days have also helped infusion of political inputs into the thinking of both the Government and Opposition leadership.

Here again, it is the Opposition that received a rap from the decision-making fora of individual parties. From the outset, there were many in all the Opposition parties who thought that the forum and opportunity in the Assembly could not be wasted regardless of the provocation. Apparently, the thinking of such individuals and groups have at last prevailed.

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Section  : Southern States
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