The Hindu : The incumbency factor

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Dec 04, 2003

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The incumbency factor

THE VICTORY OF the ruling Mizo National Front (MNF) in the Mizoram Assembly elections, giving the party a second successive term in office, has shown that anti-incumbency may be an overused rule of thumb by politicians and pundits. The MNF's last term in office does not appear to have eroded the popularity of the party or its leader and Chief Minister Zoramthanga. The party won 21 of the 40 Assembly seats, the same number it had the last time. The much-touted electoral alliance between the Mizoram People's Conference (MPC) and the fledgling Zoram Nationalist Party (ZNP) made no dent in the MNF's support base. The MPC was actually the main loser in these elections — from 11 seats in the outgoing Assembly, the party is now down to just three, while its alliance partner, the ZNP, won one. The Congress was the principal beneficiary from the MPC's loss, doubling its seats from six to 12. But with its leader, Lalthanhawla, mired in corruption charges that go back to his two terms as Chief Minister from 1989 to 1998, the party posed no threat to the MNF.

From the verdict, it is clear that the people of Mizoram view the MNF as the party that, after waging an insurgent war against the Centre for 20 years, brought peace for the Mizos through the 1986 accord with New Delhi and also helped keep it. Even though the Laldenga-led MNF Government collapsed three years after the accord, the MNF's responsible conduct through 10 years of Congress rule ensured that the pact continued to be respected. When the MNF came back to power in 1998, Chief Minister Zoramthanga, who took over the leadership of the MNF from Laldenga after his death in 1990, promised to make Mizoram the "Switzerland of the East". While that goal is still a dream, Mr. Zoramthanga purposefully used his rapport with the National Democratic Alliance at the Centre to start a major hydro-electric project in the State and to secure several World Bank-assisted schemes for employment generation. The Bharatiya Janata Party-led NDA's dependence on him as a trouble-shooter in its talks with the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah faction) also added to his stature. In the event, it was not surprising that the Mizo nationalism-on-the-sleeve agenda espoused by the MPC-ZNP alliance failed to find many takers. The BJP's efforts to cosy up to the non-Christian tribes of the majority-Christian Mizoram also fell flat with the party getting no seats at all in its first electoral venture.

Mizoram is often described as the "model State" of the troubled Northeast for the way in which peace has taken root and established itself there. Of the seven States in the Northeast, Mizoram is considered the best integrated with the rest of the country. However, it is not entirely without problems. Mizoram shares its borders with Assam, Tripura and Manipur, as well as Myanmar and Bangladesh. The State has to deal with refugees from Bangladesh and Myanmar. Since 1997, it has created refugees of its own with nearly 35,000 Reang tribals fleeing to neighbouring Tripura following ethnic tensions with Mizos. In the just concluded poll, the Election Commission had to make special arrangements for these Reang refugees to vote in their camps situated across the Mizoram border. But compared with some of its neighbours, Mizoram's problems are still manageable. Mr. Zoramthanga will need to address these issues before he can achieve his dream of a Switzerland in the Northeast.

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