Wake-up call
Listening to former ally Farooq Abdullah’s ‘honest’ advice will serve the Congress well
The gigantic but inert Congress has now been called out for its ineptness by National Conference (NC) leader Farooq Abdullah. The 83-year-old former ally of the party sounded it out on its sagging fortunes without mincing words when he advised the national party’s leadership to wake up, focus on issues pertaining to the masses and galvanise into action rather than “staying at their homes”. This veiled dig was ostensibly aimed at Wayanad MP and Congress scion Rahul Gandhi. Farooq’s “honest” wake-up call to the Congress is nothing short of a scathing indictment of the goings-on in the party for long, which have resulted in it facing electoral losses in State after State and being reduced to only an also-ran in successive elections. The Congress, which has ruled the nation at the Centre and in States across its length and breadth for most of the last 70 years and has earned the moniker of the ‘Grand Old Party’, today resembles a tired and uninspired entity. It hits the headlines mostly for the wrong reasons, be it losses at the hustings or defections by senior leaders or, worse, complaints by its own senior leaders against democracy within the party being throttled owing to the autocratic hold of a particular family’s members on its functioning. Farooq’s remarks assume especial significance since the NC leader has been a long-time ally of the Congress, even serving as a Union Minister in the Congress-led UPA Government from 2009 to 2014. His relevance in the political sphere may also be gauged by the fact that the NC has been in power in Jammu and Kashmir since 1947 in one form or the other till 2002, and again between 2009 and 2015.
In a letter addressed to Sonia Gandhi in August last year, 23 senior party leaders (who came to be known as G23) had complained about the absence of democracy within the party and stressed the need to hold free and impartial elections to choose the party president. They claimed that the uncertainty over the leadership and the rift in the Congress had weakened the party and left the workers demoralised. But now that even former allies like the NC are openly talking about and admitting to the “weakness” of the Congress, it just goes to show the bad times the ‘Grand Old Party’ of yore has fallen on. It is pertinent to mention that the Congress has continuously been ceding political space since 2014 to other national parties and even satraps. It would only benefit the Congress to heed Farooq’s remarks as these come at a time when the party is gearing up for the crucial Assembly elections beginning later this month in West Bengal, Assam, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. While it may be too early to call these election results, it’s a safe guess that the Congress may not be counted upon to perform dazzlingly in these States, especially after it announced its decision to ally with the Furufura Sharif cleric Pirzada Abbas Siddiqui-led Indian Secular Front in West Bengal.
Source: The Pioneer
