The fruits of manipulation

THE BHARATIYA JANATA Party has made it to the helm in Goa after pulling down Mr. Francisco Sardinha's coalition Ministry (of which it was a part) in a deftly-executed Operation Topple. In fact, the party's decision less than a year ago to back and join hands with Mr. Sardinha, who had walked out of the then ruling Congress, in forming a Government was widely seen to be a strategic halfway initiative towards acquiring full control over the levers of power. It was, therefore, only a matter of time before the BJP ditched him and made its final assault, and the party chose to strike when the Chief Minister was abroad on a holiday, prompting him to accuse it of ``stabbing him in the back''. If the BJP could realise its objective without much of a hassle, it was not a little due to the successive splits in the Congress legislature party, whose strength stands severely depleted since the 1999 poll (down to six from 21), and to Mr. Sardinha's perceived inability to keep his own flock together, something that came out sharply when he, after claiming `majority' support, felt compelled to quit office without facing the legislature after four of his Goan People's Congress party colleagues in the Ministry broke ranks to form their own outfit. The splinter groups of the Congress have been `absorbed' by the BJP, whose numerical strength in the House has risen to 18 from 10.

True to pattern, Mr. Manohar Parrikar, the new Chief Minister heading a 15-member squad, has rewarded the neo-converts to the BJP with ministerial berths, besides accommodating an Independent and one from the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party in his coalition Government. Substantively speaking, the pervasive practice of offering ministerships to legislators as a quid pro quo for support to a Government - be it incumbent or prospective - is not very different from giving them monetary `incentive' for the purpose, the kind of nexus that came into sharp judicial focus in the JMM MPs' payoff case. Yet, this and the others of its ilk - indicated by the term `horse trading' in parliamentary parlance - are being resorted to unabashedly and with impunity. Meaningful suggestions made by several expert panels for tightening the anti-corruption and anti-defection laws to curb these democratically subversive practices have remained unheeded by the political class, whose response has at best been limited to nominal endorsement of the correctives proposed. It is the brazenness with which politicians manipulate the legislative arithmetic to suit their designs and the utter contempt the legislators tend, of late, to show for the people's mandate - as evidenced by the opportunistic floor crossings and alliances employed to prop up or pull down a Government - that is a cause for grave concern.

Particularly murky is the record of Goa and its legislative class in this respect. While Mr. Parrikar is the third Chief Minister to assume office since the 1999 Assembly elections, Goa which became a full-fledged State in 1987 holds an unenviable position in the turnover of Governments. Mr. Parrikar's majority support is as yet untested on the floor of the Assembly, and, if as the Chief Minister claims, it is indeed true that he has not been asked to take the floor test, then the Governor, Mr. Mohammad Fazal, has rather inexplicably chosen to depart from what has evolved into a convention of sorts based broadly on the guidelines laid down by the Sarkaria Commission. As of now, the Parrikar Government may have the numbers, given the `committed' support of 22 members and the possibility of the four-member splinter group of the Goan People's Congress party also backing it. If what happened to the Luizinho Faleiro Ministry (the first to be formed soon after the 1999 Assembly poll) is anything to go by, strategies such as accretion to numerical strength and proffering of ministerships do not guarantee a Government's stability.

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Section  : Opinion
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