A Few Great Parliaments
And A Few Un-Elected MPsBy Jawed Naqvi
27 August, 2007
Countercurrents.orgIn his zeal to clinch a controversial nuclear alliance with the United States, which though not mandatory lacks a majority support in India's parliament nevertheless, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has staked everything which should be dear to him — his reputation as a supposedly sagacious leader, his government's stability, his party's future and, of course, his country's sovereignty. His spin-doctors have tried every trick in the business to prove the parliament wrong and incompetent. They have also accused the government's communist allies of seeking to thwart the deal on behalf of China, forgetting that the rightwing nationalist opposition too has voiced serious concern.
If elections are forced on the country as a result of his obsession with the US deal, Dr Singh won't be too badly affected. The reason is brazen. India may be the world's largest democracy but the Indian prime minister has never won a popular election nor under the current statutes is he required to win any. This is an incontrovertible fact. In other words, he remains the only prime minister ever in the country who was never a member of the Lok Sabha, the true house of the people.
It seems ironical, therefore, that his party boss, Ms Sonia Gandhi, more than makes up for this lack of moral legitimacy. After all she won not one but two elections from different constituencies in 2004 and got herself re-elected from one of them again, to keep her membership of the Lok Sabha. The deafening silence about why he and not she is prime minister is a sticky issue perhaps rooted in the country's pervasive political perfidy, which sometimes passes for ultra nationalism. And since he has freshly got himself re-elected to the Rajya Sabha from a safe seat in the north-eastern state of Assam, where he claims domicile status as was once required by law, the next elections will not make a major difference to Dr Singh's 16-year old tenure as MP. Everyone else in the Lok Sabha would have to toil to clear the next difficult race except him should elections be forced.
The problem of course is not only with the quality of Dr Singh's membership of parliament. In the Indian system, whether by design or default, the parliament has not been required to endorse foreign treaties and agreements. Ergo: when it comes to a momentous decision that has every possibility of changing the course of India's geopolitical profile for many years to come, its parliament, which is supposed to represent the will of a billion plus people, finds itself helpless before a prime minister who was inducted into politics by the late prime minister Narasimha Rao and has since remained a member of the Rajya Sabha, while losing the only Lok Sabha poll he ever fought.
Let's compare this situation with the primacy and respect that some of the not-so-large democracies of the world (in contrast to India of course!) like the United States, Japan and Australia accord their parliaments. Let's take the case of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who recently visited India. He won a landslide victory in the lower house of Japan's Diet in last year's elections. But then he got into trouble with the upper house which went to the opposition Democratic Party last month. Let's also take Prime Minister John Howard's situation in Australia and see if at all his policies will be pursued by the opposition party that looks certain to end his rule in elections later this year. And consider along with them the waning presidency of Mr
George Bush. All three are restricted by their parliaments in the quality of the alliances they can seek with other countries, including India. All three nations will be participating in the nuclear deal because as key members of the nuclear suppliers' group they have a direct bearing on the Indo-US agreement. Moreover, as luck would have it, all three will be participating in a controversial naval exercise with India in the Bay of Bengal next month. The quadrilateral military manoeuvre also includes Singapore of one-party rule fame. But let's look at the recent developments concerning the hold their parliaments have on the other three.
US lawmakers have warned the Bush administration of "inconsistencies" in the 123 Agreement after reports that Washington has agreed to allow India to reprocess spent nuclear fuel under the civilian nuclear deal with New Delhi. The warning came after the agreement between the US and India was finalised in extended talks in Washington last month. Yet, the primacy of the Congress in the United States was never in doubt. Lest we forget, on July 25, in a letter to President Bush, as many as 23 Congressmen led by Democratic lawmaker Edward Markey expressed their concern that perhaps Washington may have "capitulated" to India's demands on the agreement.
The Congress passed the Hyde Act less than a year ago, setting minimum conditions that must be met for nuclear cooperation with India, as well as the non-negotiable restrictions on such cooperation, Mr Markey said. This is precisely the difficulty with the deal that Indian communists and opposition BJP have been trying to point out to Dr Singh, but to little effect.
As is obvious, far from the explanations given by Dr Singh's spin-doctors, Mr Markey says the Hyde Act was not optional or advisory. "If the 123 Agreement has been intentionally negotiated to sidestep or bypass the law and the will of Congress, final approval for this deal will be jeopardised." In Japan, Prime Minister Abe is regarded as a rightward-leaning nationalist who shares the American world view to set things right, so to speak, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Part of the quadrilateral naval exercise's mission is to prepare for future contingencies in this regard, even as the feared but unstated encirclement of China may not be entirely imaginary. But in a shock verdict in polls last month, Mr Abe's Liberal Democratic Party lost the upper house to the Democratic Party of Japan, which opposes most defence ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. Though the United States is pressuring it hard to fall in line on US-led military outings, the Japanese opposition are going to keep Mr Abe on his toes. The agreement, which got Japan involved in the so-called war on terror, will lapse in November unless the opposition helps Mr Abe out of the big hole he has landed himself in. That's the hold parliaments have and should have on their wayward governments.
As for Prime Minister Howard, his support for the Indo-US nuclear deal and for other American-led ventures may soon be a thing of the past after the elections due later this year. Mr Mike Rann, the South Australian Premier and senior Labour Party leader, told The Hindu recently that there was no question of allowing the present federal government's uranium proposal to go through as "it is absolutely against Labour Party policy".
Mr Rann, who as premier administers an Australian region with 40 per cent of the world's uranium reserves, said his condemnation of the Liberal government's decision to sell uranium to India was not specifically directed at the country. He explained it stemmed from the general principle that uranium should not be sold to any country that has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Selling uranium to India would lead to similar demands from other countries and have a "cascading effect", he said. This would damage the "internal structure of the NPT". While there is no shortage of people who want to buy Australian uranium, he said a Labour Party-led government would "love to sell uranium to India provided it signs the NPT".
These are democracies, perhaps not as perfect as India's or as large, but ones whose parliaments mean business and have the means to ensure their writ runs as law. In November the opposition in the upper house of the Diet will test Mr Abe's mettle. Come elections and Mr Howard's great gesture to India on the nuclear deal looks pretty likely to turn into dust minus the uranium. And of course the US Congress has all the instruments at its disposal to tweak the ears of their president as also of any country that violates its laws.
No wonder Dr Singh is in such a tearing hurry to make his deal secure before the end of the year. If the cost proves prohibitive for the country it hardly matters if you have a six-year term assured in the Rajya Sabha.
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