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Sonia indicts Govt., Advani rebuts charges

By Our New Delhi Bureau

The Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, and the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, look on as the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj, speaks during the debate on the no-confidence motion in Parliament on Monday. — PTI (TV image)

NEW DELHI AUG. 18. The Vajpayee Government escaped un-mauled, though not un-clawed on Monday, the first day of the no-confidence motion debate in the Lok Sabha. The Leader of the Opposition, Sonia Gandhi's nine-point indictment of the Government remained mostly unanswered, as the speakers of the National Democratic Alliance treated the debate as an occasion for political grandstanding.

The first no-confidence debate in the 13th Lok Sabha witnessed, expectedly, an intensely partisan and acrimonious debate, often resembling a dialogue of the deaf, with neither side willing to listen to the other.There was a time when members almost came to blows. The partisanship took its most cantankerous turn when the Defence Minister, George Fernandes, intervened to defend his stewardship of the Ministry. His strategy was to provoke the Congress benches — and, provoke he did, leading to interruption after interruption. At one stage, the Speaker ordered stoppage of the national telecast of the proceedings.

At the end of the day, the honours were even. The Opposition fielded Sonia Gandhi, the CPI (M)'s Somnath Chatterjee and the Samajwadi Party leader, Mulayam Singh Yadav; the Government was adequately defended by the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, and passionately by Mr. Fernandes.

Opening the debate, Ms. Gandhi spelled out in an hour-long speech nine counts on which the Government deserved to be indicted. In a combative performance, she charged the Government with failure on the nation's defence, weakening national security, wrecking social harmony, subverting the secular character of the educational system, destroying probity in administration and public life, increasing unemployment and dismantling the public sector, adding to the misery of kisans and agricultural labour, denigrating key institutions of parliamentary democracy and undermining the independence of foreign policy. In particular, Ms. Gandhi challenged the Government on three of its most cherished accomplishments: the Kargil "victory" and defence preparedness, "victory" in the proxy war with Pakistan, and the achievements on the foreign policy front. As the Government's lead spokesman, Mr. Advani set the ball rolling by underlining the "feel good" sentiment, playing on the theme that the country stood tall in the eyes of the world and was at peace with itself under Mr. Vajpayee's leadership. This was the NDA's theme song; by contrast, the NDA benches implied, the Opposition was not united behind Ms. Gandhi. Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress challenged the non-Congress Opposition parties to "declare here and now" whether Ms. Gandhi was acceptable as Prime Minister. It was left to Mr. Mulayam Singh to tell the NDA benches not to worry about the alternative leadership.

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