Arvind Kejriwal had banked on public sympathy for his party in the lok Sabha election, because he had ‘sacrificed’ his regime in Delhi and gone after the ‘evil’ and ‘corrupt’. People have seen through the farce
People make mistakes and they often live to rue it. Some admit to the blunders straightaway, others make a virtue of it till they realise the error has come to consume them. They try to wriggle out of the jaws of disaster, pleading that they read the signs wrong and should be pardoned. If they are lucky to have done so in the early stages, they have a chance of survival; if not, they are doomed until the next time comes when they can seek redemption. Mr Arvind Kejriwal is not sure if he is doomed for now for the mistake he committed three months ago, and whether the next time will come soon enough — if it does at all — for him to resurrect. He would like to believe in a less torturous ending. Which sad soul will not, when he is staring at a monumental electoral defeat across the country on the heels of a heady victory in a State that also doubles up as the nation’s capitalIJ
The Aam Aadmi Party leader candidly admitted a few days ago that perhaps the decision to pull out his Government in Delhi after being barely 50 days in office was not such a wise move, after all. He thought aloud that as the Chief Minister, he should have deliberated more deeply on the decision with the people before giving it effect. The problem is not just that his acknowledgement comes late in the day, but also that it effectively gives the lie to all that he and his party have been maintaining these past few weeks to justify the decision to quit governance. Mr Kejriwal had after all, in his own words, “sacrificed” his Government in the grand fight against corruption and for a Jan lokpal Bill. He stands by the sacrifice theory and claims that he failed to communicate it to the people. It is difficult to convince people about a flawed decision.
He had also said for added impact that he and his party had never been interested in power, but were keen to ensure a “change in the system”. Never mind that he did accept power without having a majority in the Assembly and ran away on the flimsiest pretext from changing the system when he had the chance to do so as an insider.
The reason why he played the double game with the voters by resigning as Chief Minister and leaving Delhi without a Government within weeks of an expensive election that gave a hung mandate, is clear enough: He wanted to approach the coming lok Sabha election as a martyr and mop up sympathy votes. He had believed — and he must have missed the sense of irony in doing so — that the people whom he had stabbed in the back by first gaining their trust and then escaping from managing their affairs, would see him as a hero who had laid down his office for a great cause.
Now he knows that none of those tactics has worked. Posters have reportedly come up in Varanasi, from where he is contesting the lok Sabha election against Mr Narendra Modi, sneeringly pointing out: “Dekho-dekho, Delhi ka bhagoda aayaa (look, escapist of Delhi has come!). The act which the Aam Aadmi Party leader had hoped would give him traction to battle the giants in the general election has become an albatross round his neck. It’s not just Varanasi; across the country the refrain we hear from the people on television channels is that they cannot trust a man who abandoned governance of a State to seek higher stakes in the country. Trust-deficit, therefore, has come to haunt Mr Kejriwal, and it will rub off on his candidates as well.
If opinion poll results are to be believed, the Aam Aadmi Party is likely to end up with less than half a dozen seats nationwide — and even that pithy figure is doubtful if the party fares poorly in its stronghold of Delhi. Mr Kejriwal’s Delhi fiasco may not be entirely responsible for the projected performance, but it has played a dominant role in shaping the people’s opinion against him. And, once the general stands discredited, the army has simply no chance to fight, or fight back. We are seeing the Aam Aadmi Party in retreat now, burdened by the questionable conduct of its leader and prime mover, though the party thinks otherwise and hopes to do better than expected.
Mr Kejriwal has erred in being over-optimistic. He should have concentrated his energies on consolidating his base in Delhi before moving on to the national stage. A new party should move step by step. But, flush with the results in Delhi, the Aam Aadmi Party believed that it had overnight morphed into a national outfit and was poised to reap the bigger harvest. Greed is never good.
Realising that the ‘martyr’ factor is not going to see him through since the people have seen through it, Mr Kejriwal has fallen back on his favourite hobby of slandering tall leaders — not because he has anything substantial against them but because targeting them brings him publicity. He is basking in the reflected glory of Mr Modi whom he has chosen as the prime enemy. He could have done everything imaginable and yet remained insignificant. By contesting against Mr Modi in Varanasi, he has managed to draw attention to himself and the party he leads. He speaks relatively less against Mr Rahul Gandhi because he knows that Mr Gandhi is not the man of the moment. He speaks even lesser on Ms Sonia Gandhi, though the reasons for that are more complicated and perhaps lead to a secret world from where his double-speak derives.
At the height of the anti-corruption movement some two years ago, Mr Kejriwal basked in the reflected glory of Anna Hazare. He came on his own for only a brief while, when he parted ways with his mentor, formed the Aam Aadmi Party and led it to remarkable success in the Assembly election in Delhi. From thereon, he lost the plot, and now it appears, the lok Sabha election as well.
To sum up, Mr Kejriwal’s problem is one of lack of credibility, and his party’s problem is one of lack of direction. There is an irony here too. He had burst on the political scene on the strength of being a credible leader, and his party had gained merit for its promise to offer a fresh direction to politics. Since neither has stood the test of time, both leader and party have been left stranded and reduced to ‘me-too’ in most lok Sabha constituencies
Does this mean that the Aam Aadmi Party is finished or that Mr Kejriwal is a spent forceIJ We don’t know yet. If the two re-shape their politics, shed needless confrontation, adopt a more mature and less slanderous approach, they have a future. Else, they will be history.
(The accompanying visual is of a poster come up in Varanasi that mocks Arvind Kejriwal for being an escapist)