Trinamool’s tryst with success

Kolkata: An unquestionably authentic verdict is fundamental as much for democracy as it is for political parties that win with spectacular success. Twenty years ago, when elections in West Bengal were questioned routinely by the Opposition, accusing the ruling party of “scientific rigging,” intimidation and violence aided by the police and the state bureaucracy, the wins by the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front and, more importantly, the defeat of the Opposition, both lacked credibility.

The Trinamool’ triumph of winning 114 out of 144 seats in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and 71 out of 92 civic bodies in the local elections has gifted the Opposition the opportunity to question the verdict and level charges of large-scale, planned and well-executed rigging. The Trinamool, thus, remains trapped in the mythology of success written by the CPM when it won every election for 34 years, with the Opposition reduced to a token presence. “This victory is an answer to all the slander and canard that was spread against us... Had there been rigging, we would not have lost the few seats,” Mamata Banerjee said. This may be balm to the evidently bruised, if not battered self-esteem of the Trinamool, but now, like then, the obsession with winning absolutely opens up outcomes to charges of being cooked up.

It was, perhaps, this absence of authenticity that converted a bandh by the defeated Opposition, immediately after the civic poll results, into a credible challenge to the supremacy of the Trinamool. The bandh should have failed, because the Trinamool and the West Bengal government announced that disruption of normalcy would not be tolerated and it used its power to coerce the citizen into playing the game of normalcy by holding university examinations on the bandh day
The actual numbers of injured, dead polling booths where the Opposition received less than 10 votes is important for the record, but those are the details. The Trinamool reigns supreme now. The civic elections, in fact, turned into a contest to prove Ms Banerjee’s supremacy. This was necessary given the upheavals within the Trinamool, especially the virtual exit of the man described as the mastermind of past elections and the party’s principal organiser, Mukul Roy.

The civic elections were also a contest against a new and rising Opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP’s performance was poor overall and in Kolkata it bombed. The elections did, however, reinstate the CPI(M) as the party of Opposition. Despite its losses, it won back the stronghold of Siliguri, as did the Congress to some extent.

Polarisation, which is a characteristic of West Bengal politics and delivers massive victories to the winning side, seems to be undergoing a change. The emerging picture of a patchwork of Opposition spaces within the dominant Trinamool turf may fade or brighten, depending on how worthwhile the ruling party and the Opposition appear as choices to voters accustomed to the simplicity of bipolar elections. The Opposition — despite the poor showing of the Congress, the CPM-led Left Front and the BJP — is a counter weight and after the civic elections it would seem that the Trinamool will have to fight various Opposition parties in multiple locations. After winning 50+ per cent of the votes polled in Kolkata, the Trinamool has every reason to be pleased that it enjoys majority support of the people. This also means that 49 per cent of the votes have gone to the Opposition. The turf that the Trinamool is now defending as its own can change, perhaps in patches, if the voter perceives an advantage elsewhere or the present level of optimism with the distribution of benefits among party workers and supporters drops. The clashes within the Trinamool indicate that there is volatility within.

This uncertainty is what makes the charge of rigging and the need for authenticity in the election process so crucial for the Trinamool. It also requires the ruling party to deliver governance without protecting the useful wrongdoer, such as one of the strong men of Birbhum, Anubrata Mandal, because any favours done to such persons rebound on the Trinamool.

The presence of a healthy Opposition, which need not necessarily mean numbers in either the municipalities or in the state Assembly, authenticates the Trinamool’s popularity. Respect for the Opposition works the same way. To lock the Opposition out of what is legitimately its space, as Kolkata’s mayor Sobhan Chatterjee has done (he has locked up the rooms occupied by the Opposition in the KMC building, saying that the Opposition does not have the required numbers), is as unseemly as it is unparliamentary.

To vow to rid West Bengal of the CPM in the run up to 2011 was a brave and bold slogan. To promise paribartan in the process of throwing out the CPM was raising expectations. To declare the Opposition irrelevant, as the Trinamool has done after the civic election results is to take a risk. Voter verdicts change over time and circumstances never remain the same.

The writer is a senior journalist based in Kolkata