No Manifesto for Delhi Polls: Will BJP Benefit by Constantly Changing its Strategy?
January 31, 2015
Issues lose their relevance in the clash of personalities. Delhi is witnessing this in the ensuing Assembly elections.
While the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) decided against bringing out manifestos for each of the constituency like what it had done last time, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) decided not to bring out its manifesto for Delhi at all. Instead, on January 29 (barely ten days before the election), it said it would “bring a vision document” for the development of Delhi.
The BJP’s decision is surprising considering that a manifesto is considered the blueprint of governance by a political party in case it wins; it is the public declaration of a political party’s policy and aims before an election.
BJP and AAP Indulging in Personality-Centric Electioneering
The BJP’s concept of the “vision document” seems an extension of the US Presidential style of campaigning that the political parties (more particularly the BJP and the AAP) are, of late, indulging into by picking up credible faces who could win elections for them. Therefore, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi emerged as the winning face of the BJP in recent times, Arvind Kejriwal clicked as the face of the AAP in Delhi. Now in Delhi, the BJP pins its hopes on Kiran Bedi – a rank outsider but with a good image of an able and honest (retired) police officer.
Yet another significant decision of the BJP just before the election has been to ask five questions daily to Kejriwal till February 5—the last day of campaigning. This does remind of eminent lawyer and politician Ram Jethmalani nitpicking the then Prime Minister late Rajiv Gandhi with ten questions daily in 1988 (when Rajiv’s name was dragged in the Bofors scam).
Such nitpickings are fraught with the danger to bringing down the level of debate to a personal level. Even the BJP questions on the first day, such as why Kejriwal took a U-turn and joined hands with the Congress to form the government in 2013 or accepted Z plus security…, were nothing new and veritably prompted the AAP ideologue, Yogendra Yadav’s remark that “…at least they should come with a new set of questions”.
It may be recalled that through these columns, we had deliberated on this new trend of personality-centric electioneering which seems to be an outcome of the failure of the political parties to stick to issue-based politics (Read Delhi Elections 2015: Will the Fight for Personal Prestige Overshadow Real Issues in Delhi?).
Delhi Polls: No more a Fight over Issues?
It is easier for political parties to identify a target and attack than to fight over issues. The BJP president Amit Shah is already on record conceding the BJP’s direct fight in Delhi is with the AAP as the Congress “is on the verge of being finished”.
Yet by doing so, the BJP does appear more rattled than its rivals. This also sends a confusing signal to its cadres and candidates because personality based politics gives scope to idolisation and this does have its own negative fallouts. Consider how Bedi herself fell to the trap by making US President Barack Obama’s visit a selling point in her poll campaign. Mark her statement: “Today, Obama has come and all of India is flying. Modi has done so much…” Yet another BJP candidate, Rajiv Babbar, went a step ahead putting up posters that showed him with Obama and Bedi! Now what does Obama have to do with Delhi polls? This only indicates how personalities dominate issues these days.
AAP: Making Delhi Election a Kejriwal Versus Others Affair
Yet this was not a one-way affair. Consider how Kejriwal himself sought to make the Delhi election a contest between himself and the BJP’s veteran Jagdish Mukhi at a time when the BJP had sought to make the Delhi election an all out Narendra Modi affair in a bid to ride high on the Prime Minister’s larger than life image and thus shift the focus of the Delhi battle. After all, Modi’s image had indeed clinched the issue in the BJP’s favour in the last General Elections 2014 and all the state elections that followed!
A legal notice from Mukhi and protest from the BJP though prompted the AAP deftly give the contest a Kejriwal versus Modi twist, thus cleverly exposing Modi to the line of fire. As for the BJP, obviously the Prime Minister needed to be insulated from any embarrassment as opinion polls as well as the BJP’s internal surveys predicted a tough contest in hand for Delhi. And this prompted the last minute induction of Kiran Bedi to the party fold as the BJP’s CM face.
BJP Going All-Out in Last Leg of Campaigning
In fact the AAP-centric campaigning of the BJP has indirectly helped Kejriwal thus far. Once again, after the famous Kejriwal versus Modi contest for the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat last summer, the AAP is trying to give it a David versus Goliath twist. It is more than once that the BJP has revised its strategy in Delhi to counter the AAP’s challenge. Ostensibly considered as untouchable by both the AAP and the Congress, the party very well realises that it requires an absolute majority to rule Delhi because in case of a hung assembly – as was the case last time – neither the AAP nor the Congress will support it to form the government.
This does explain the frequent changes in its poll strategy. It is pulling up its socks and decided to go all out in the last leg of campaigning by roping in not less than 120 MPs from 13 states. Obviously faces do matter when the only issue is to win. After all, who cares for manifestos?
Comments
Post a Comment