For Congress, all but Sonia, Rahul, accountable
Victory and defeat are part of political life, but so is accountability. The true test of leadership comes in the wake of setbacks. The senior leadership can either take responsibility and quit or cling on to the position on the pretext that it is still wanted by its followers. Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi have opted for the latter. On Monday, as part of a scripted drama, they offered to resign following the unprecedented drubbing the party has received in the lok Sabha election. Predictably enough, members of the Congress Working Committee unanimously rejected the offer and pleaded with them to continue providing the party their valued leadership. The two leaders promptly obliged. All is back to normal in the party. Since the CWC has authorised Ms Gandhi and her son to take whatever measures are necessary to address the near decimation of the party, we have a situation where the party's two biggest leaders who have owned up moral responsibility but not quit, have to hold others accountable for the loss. But how will they have the moral right to make heads roll when they themselves have not paid a price for the defeatIJ The argument that the party's president and vice president bowed to the overwhelming wish of the CWC to continue, does not hold water. After all, Ms Gandhi had in 2004 resisted the clamour from not just the senior leadership of the Congress but also the party’s cadre to become the Prime Minister. She had then heeded her ‘inner voice' and appointed Mr Manmohan Singh to the post. It appears that her inner voice was silent on Monday; else she could have easily been firm on her resignation and passed on the baton to a different set of leaders. Had she done that, Mr Gandhi would have probably followed suit, and the Congress would have had a new set of leadership outside the Nehru-Gandhi family. This would have also silenced the critics of the Congress who have maintained, and not without reason, that the party has become a family affair.
This is not to say that the Congress president should have taken political sanyas. Ms Gandhi could have continued to mentor the party and its new leadership by ceding space to young and talented leaders. It is unlikely that senior members of the Congress, let alone party workers, would have rebelled if the move to bring in a fresh leadership at the very top had Ms Gandhi’s blessing and support. With Ms Gandhi at the top and Mr Rahul Gandhi continuing to call the shots despite having (repeatedly) led his party to humiliating defeats, there is no hope of a real revamp of the Congress. While no Congress leader is willing to go on record, the fact is that quite a few are disgruntled and dismayed over attempts to protect the family’s hegemony. They just do not have the spine to say it openly.
The failure of both Ms Gandhi and the party’s vice president to quit has naturally heartened all those who believed they would face the axe for non-performance. Their contention will be that they cannot be sacked when the senior-most leaders who are responsible for the party's debacle are allowed to continue. Of course, such logic does not work in the Congress. Scapegoats will be found soon enough to deflect attention from the family. But the mess will remain.