Bengaluru: “Always forgive your enemies, nothing annoys them as much….” — that’s Oscar Wilde’s twist in the knife to the Christian ‘love your enemy’ line.
One doesn’t know whether Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, was governed by Wilde’s dictum when bringing his Janata Dal (S) adversaries into the Palike big tent, squeezing out the BJP that ran our city right down to the ground, but, found itself re-elected anyway.
One doesn’t even know whether the hardwired political savant Hardanahalli Doddegowda Devegowda had ol’Oscar in mind, when he set this particular ball in motion.Siddaramaiah swallowing his pride, accepting his hand of friendship! Wow!
Who played matchmaker? Was it the Dal’s savvy trio of Akhand Srinivas Murthy, Gopalaiah and Zameer Ahmed working in tandem with Congressmen Byrathi Suresh. The men who signalled that they would much rather sup with Siddaramaiah’s Congress than the saffronists after the BJP’s hubris at winning back the Palike saw them treat the Dal, and three critical independents who were up for grabs, with barely concealed scorn. Go to the Congress, the BJP top honchos said. And they did!
Insiders tell me that the trio, seen as close to the chief minister — one, a fellow Kuruba, the others, simpatico — were ready to break with the Dal and join the Congress, if the deal didn’t get the patriarch’s blessing. That’s the last thing, the Gowda patrone would have wanted. Not when the whole point of patching up with his former protégé was to keep his Dal flock together. Either way, nobody but nobody saw this coming.
Not one pundit, not one political commentator saw the end of a ten year long feud between mentor and mentee ending in this fashion on the very night the votes came in. Has the feud ended; Is it, as the skeptics say, merely a means to an end? I mean, have the two men who, until last week, threw a torrent of abuse at each other, every putdown more sarcastic, vicious than the next, even met or spoken yet?
It’s not difficult to see what persuaded the chief minister, even in the face of criticism from diehard Congressmen like speaker Kagodu Thimappa (and others like D.K.Shivakumar, Dinesh Gundurao, Krishna Byre Gowda and Ramalinga Reddy who kept it sotto voce), who openly warned of the Dal leaders’ notoriously fickle loyalties.
For Siddaramaiah the deal was a no-brainer. It keeps old Congressmen who have always seen him as an outsider despite his ten years in the party, unable to bay for his blood. That would include the KPCC chief Dr Parameshwar, who must wonder what made Siddaramaiah turn this old enmity on its head and do a complete turnaround; some would say, even emulating Deve Gowda’s sharp move that saw the old Mysore party break bread with the BJP in 2004.
With the JD(S)’ support, Siddaramaiah gets control of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), that going strictly by the book saw the Congress win only 76 seats against the BJP’s 100. (The JD(S) (14) and the Independents (8 minus one who joined the BJP) make up the shortfall, with the rest of the numbers coming in from the interesting addition of elected legislators to the mix.
Unless the Governor throws a spanner in the works, September 11 could see the first Congress Mayor in a long time. That’s when the new corporators of the BBMP vote in a Mayor and Deputy Mayor, and the standing committees are distributed in lieu of support.
Insiders say that Siddaramaiah wanted to deny the BJP control of the BBMP as that would mean they control a cash-rich city in the south that is a byword for IT excellence across the world. This would enable Prime Minister Modi to take the credit if it does emerge from the ghastly mess it is currently in.
Despite being left out of Prime Minister Modi’s list of Smart Cities, the CM has every intention of making Bengaluru smarter than all the rest. This way, the BJP keeps the blame for ripping the city off during its BBMP tenure, and the CM gets the credit for reinventing Bengaluru — and the state —while shedding his rural strongman tag forever.
That’s Siddaramaiah, who despite the buzz over how Deve Gowda was going to throw a spanner in the works by demanding he stop the division of the city into five as the price for Dal support, knows what buttons he can push to get the veteran politician to fall in line.
It could as easily blow up in his face of course. If the JD(S) does pull the plug, however, he could still use the opportunity to tell the world that while he tried to get the very best deal for Bengaluru by even working out an arrangement with the JD(S), Deve Gowda played the spoiler.
Would the Dal leaders really throw it all away? For Deve Gowda, the primary driver for such an alliance is to bring the JD(S) back into the reckoning in the city, while keeping his own Vokkaliga flock from straying to the Congress — and towards even the Lingayatised BJP — and in the coming months, help to shore up his fast eroding base in the peripheries where a longstanding rivalry with the Congress’ D.K.Shivakumar has left the JD(S) with an electoral bloody nose.
It is universally agreed that the father and son, former chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, have not always been on the same page. Many believe that HDK’s disappearance from the scene ever since Mr. Deve Gowda’s dramatic press conference and his stalled meet with the KPCC chief Mr. Parameswar (now set for Sunday) is because he is in poor health. Congress sceptics say it’s because the father and son are squabbling. The far more likely story is that the father and son are preparing a strategy to ensure a foolproof deal where no skeletons from the past return to haunt them. That’s some leverage the CM could use. That, and his inside knowledge of how the Dal operates could ensure that the Gowdas don’t leave them hanging, half-way up the aisle.
For the BJP, the frustration at being so close, yet so far must be its most difficult moment yet. The ‘deal’ was the God-given opportunity to start street protests, tom-tom it to Bengaluru and the world, how they had been robbed of the big prize, its rightful winnings in this high stakes game denied by the Machiavellian behind closed doors ‘sauda’ between the Congress and the JD(S) to divide up the city between them. Except, the poor show at the Town Hall protest on Friday tells its own startling story.
This is a BJP which didn’t even have to work to get the Lingayat vote. That was a given. But with the slow but steady decline of their former Lingayat icon, diminished, many say by his bete noire, Ananth Kumar, there was a deliberate sidelining of not just a tarnished BSY, but of other stalwarts like Suresh Kumar and perhaps to a lesser extent, Somanna, P.C. Mohan and S. Raghu, and even Arvind Limbavalli and Sadananda Gowda while the new star on the horizon, R. Ashok grew ever larger.
A Vokkaliga, Ashok was being touted, with the blessings of the new BJP brains-trust as the leader who would draw the huge upper caste vote to the BJP, as against Sadananda Gowda who didn’t quite cut it with Delhi either. This would be the leader who would checkmate the Congress’ D.K Shivakumar who bested the JD(S) — when it was allied with the BJP — every time.
The BJP strategy was therefore almost foolproof. Sure enough, the Lingayat matrix overlaid with the Vokkaliga won the BJP, the Palike. But funny isn’t it, how the hubris of victory makes you believe you’re king of the heap, and how one small discourtesy can unspool and unravel a well-crafted strategy. And one man forgiving his enemy breaches a saffron fortress. As it did last week. Come September 11, we’ll see how the chips finally fall. And whether Bengaluru gets the governance it truly deserves.
