A
Few Great Parliaments
And A Few Un-Elected MPs
By Jawed Naqvi
27 August, 2007
Countercurrents.org
In
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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