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POLITICAL DIARY
Both UPA & NDA Guilty
TRIVIALISING PARLIAMENT SHAMELESSLY
By Poonam I Kaushish
New Delhi, December 04, 2007
Parliament continues to be trivialised and
denigrated. Shamelessly. Without even the slightest tinge of
remorse or regret. Indeed, a tragic farce was enacted last
week in both the Houses. In the Lok Sabha, one stood witness
to the macabre and lurid political pantomime on the Indo-US
nuclear deal. Wherein the UPA Government’s over-smartness by
‘cotton-wooling’ the Prime Minister from answering the MPs
searching queries seemed to have politically boomeranged. No
wonder it generated a lot of empty noise from vacant benches!
If this trifling spelt bad news, worse happened in the Rajya
Sabha. The Government surreptitiously smuggled in the AIIMS
Amendment Bill 2007 for consideration and passage in a
Supplementary List of Business circulated on Wednesday
morning. That too when the business listed for the day was far
from over. True, technically speaking, the Government has
every right to bring a supplementary list. But it should have
at least extended the courtesy of sounding out the Opposition
in advance.
More so against the backdrop, that the BJP had informed the
Government that its leaders, who had been designated for
speaking on the Bill would not be available on Wednesday. What
was the tearing hurry? Should the Union Health Minister’s
one-point agenda of ousting the AIIMS Director have taken
precedence over the dignity of Parliament and what is right?
Political One-Upmanship
At one level, not a few would dismiss these outrageous
happenings as an exercise in political one-upmanship between
the NDA, Left and UPA. The former drawing blood and the latter
battling for political supremacy. At another, and far more
significantly, the issue today is not what happens to the
nuclear deal and AIIMS. What matters is the unprecedented and
umpteen body blows administered to Parliament and its
sovereignty by the UPA and the NDA. Individually and
collectively.
A sad reflection, indeed, of the depth to which India’s
democracy has degenerated. Transgressing all limits of
Parliamentary ethics. Not many seem to understand the
diabolical and dangerous dimensions of making Parliament
insignificant. It needs to be remembered that the temple of
democracy is the bedrock of our nation State. Parliament
represents the people of India, who count upon it to function
as the sovereign watchdog of their national interest.
Constitutionally, the Executive is responsible and accountable
to Parliament every second of the day. Its survival depends on
its enjoying the confidence of the Lok Sabha. Nothing more,
nothing less.
Think. When Parliament is in session and a majority of the MPs
are opposed to the deal and looking forward to hearing Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh’s himself, why did the Government
field the Leader of the House and External Affairs Minister
Pranab Mukherjee instead? Particularly, as the whole story of
the deal started with Manmohan Singh’s meeting with President
Bush in Washington followed by a joint statement on 18 July
2005.
Subsequently, the PM silenced various critics by giving solemn
assurances on the deal to both the Houses. It was therefore,
for him and him alone as the head of Government to tell the
Lok Sabha whether the assurances had been met. It was for him
alone to come out clean in the matter, not his Foreign
Minister, even if he was the convener of the UPA-Left
Committee and the Leader of the House. In fact, Pranab
Mukherjee, as the Leader of the House, should have prevailed
upon the PM to reply, or at least, intervene substantially in
the debate.
PM’s Astonishing Refusal
Remember, the Leader of the House is expected to uphold the
dignity of the House which, regrettably, has been compromised
by the PM’s astonishing refusal to reply and answer pointed
questions which he alone was competent to answer. Specially as
Manmohan Singh doubles up as the Minister for Atomic Energy
and was present during the entire six-and-a-half hour debate.
The Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, no doubt, argued that
“at no point of time there was any commitment from the
Government that the PM would reply…” He also added that “our
PM has spoken four times” on the subject and “we made no
commitment to the Business advisory Committee” that the PM
would reply. But in doing so, he only made matters worse,
reducing Parliament to irrelevance.
Plainly, the PM has been grossly unfair to Parliament by not
participating in the debate. Something wholly unexpected from
one who is widely acknowledged as “a nice guy.” But to
understand how scorn was poured on this high temple of
democracy, one needs to highlight the sequence of events and
how the fears raised by members cutting across the political
spectrum on the deal remained unanswered.
The CPM’s Rupchand Pal initiated the debate by raising pointed
queries. He said: “We have raised nine points where we differ
and we have serious reservations vis-à-vis the Draft123
Agreement …In August 2006, the hon. PM came out with
reassurances and assurances on all those points. But to our
dismay, we found that in the Hyde Act December, 2006, most of
the important assurances given by the PM on the floor of the
House were trampled and ignored. Our apprehensions have been
proved true repeatedly.”
Asserted the Leader of the Opposition, LK Advani: “I would
like to recall that a question was posed to the PM two days
after his Joint Statement with President Bush on Nuclear
Cooperation in July 2005. He was asked: ‘Do you see any
resistance coming forward from your allies and the Opposition
in putting the new India-US Policy to practice, and will you
seek a Parliamentary consensus or approval to the new
direction you seem to be taking in Foreign Policy?”
National Consensus
Added Advani: “The PM replied: ‘The Parliament in our country
is sovereign. It is my intention to make a statement in
Parliament when I go back home and it goes without saying that
we can move forward only on the basis of a broad national
consensus.’ My first poser is this. Do you see this broad
national consensus? When it is obvious that there is no broad
consensus, why are you so rushing into this deal?
“Mr. Prime Minister, are you determined to ensure through this
deal that there will be no Pokhran III? Is that your desire?
Our objection to this particular deal is principally because
this deal prohibits India from making another test. Section
106 of the Hyde Act bans Indian testing. Are these consistent
with the assurances given in both Houses that under no
circumstances, would we accept the kind of restriction on our
right to test?
The PM countered: “What our Government has done is no more
than what your Government had done. We are committed only to a
unilateral moratorium and that if in our wisdom, if necessity
arises that this country has to have a test, there is nothing
in this agreement which prevents the exercise of that
sovereignty.”
Shot back Advani: “Correct… A country which unilaterally
decides to have a moratorium can unilaterally decide to
disregard it. But, here we are inviting consequences if we
test. I regard it as an infringement of India’s sovereignty.
That we will explain why a test became necessary? It is for
them to be satisfied…. No self-respecting country should agree
to it. I would urge the Government to come to Parliament clean
on this matter.”
The I&B Minister, Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, argued that “at no
point of time, there was any commitment from the Government
that the PM would reply.” But Advani hit back: “In fairness to
the House and the country, it is an important debate – after
all, you (PM) have been dealing with the matter since 2005.
You have listened to the whole debate. I do not see why you
should not reply to the debate.”
The PM sat unmoved. His refusal to speak resulted in the NDA
walking out without hearing Mukherjee’s reply. The Foreign
Minister bemoaned: “I expected that the Leader of the
Opposition would remain to listen to the reply to the points,
which he raised but after all we are living in a world where
all the parliamentary norms, etiquettes and courtesies are
thrown to the wind. For the first time in the history of this
country, the Prime Minister was not allowed to speak on August
13, 2007… because of the obstruction of the principal
Opposition party a discussion could not take place.”
What the NDA did that day was unacceptable and unpardonable.
It was, indeed, a black day in the history of free India’s
Parliament. But this does not provide any justification for
the PM to have sulked and stubbornly refused to reply to the
debate. As the PM and his Foreign Minister should know, two
wrongs have never made a right. Moreover, a pot has no
business to call a kettle black!
At the end of it all, the debate ended sans the PM’s
categorical assurance of 20 July 2005 that the Government
would “move forward only on the basis of a national consensus.
It also raised before India a bigger question mark over the
future of its parliamentary democracy. It is high time the
Government and the Opposition stop trivializing and
denigrating parliament. Either it is sovereign or it is not.
---- INFA
(Copyright India News & Feature Alliance)
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