The son also disappears

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

Rahul is away, working on his beard

IT IS hard to imagine what more could go wrong for Congress, which has dominated Indian politics for much of the country’s independent life. Last year’s parliamentary elections were disastrous: the party took just 44 seats (out of 543) in May, too few to count as the official opposition. In five state assembly polls since then it has been crushed. In February’s election in Delhi, a territory it ran for 15 years up to 2013, Congress won no seats.

Awful electoral losses might be explained as part of a political cycle. Failed leadership and division are graver threats. The biggest problem is Rahul Gandhi, the 44-year-old scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, who expects to become Congress’s “working president” this year. Mr Gandhi led the party to its worst-ever national defeat last year, but tells colleagues that all blame rests on the previous, unpopular, Congress-led government.

He has a habit of shirking responsibility. He spurned offers from Manmohan Singh, who was prime minister from 2004 to 2014, to enter the government. An MP who knows him well suggests he thought a mere ministership beneath him. He rarely speaks in parliament and has declined to lead Congress’s MPs in the lower house. After guiding Congress to a thumping defeat in state elections in Uttar Pradesh in 2012, he disappeared from public view for months. He is missing again: since February 23rd he has taken an unspecified period of leave in a secret location. The timing is terrible: parliament’s budget session is under way. Last week Narendra Modi’s government passed its biggest reform yet, to let more foreign investment into the insurance industry.

With Mr Gandhi away, his mother, Sonia, is trying to rally the demoralised troops. Thanks to the electoral timetable, Congress will retain a strong presence in the upper house of parliament for a couple more years, and has been busy opposing government bills there. This week Mrs Gandhi led a march in Delhi against proposals to weaken farmers’ property rights to make it easier for investors to buy land. Last week she took around 100 Congress politicians to the home of Mr Singh, supporting him after a special court ruled that he must appear next month, as an accused, over a massive coal scandal.

The prosecution of the former prime minister (if it happens) could be a slim opportunity for Congress as well as a threat. Mr Singh took personal charge of a notoriously crooked coal ministry, so he needs to explain how favoured companies—donors to political parties—won control of valuable coal deposits. A trial could confirm Congress’s reputation for shady deals, but abandoning Mr Singh to take the rap on his own could backfire on the party, since he was known to do the bidding of the powerful Gandhi family. Congress is reluctant to repeat the shabby treatment of its only other prime minister in the past quarter of a century, Narasimha Rao. He was seen as a rival to Mrs Gandhi, so the great reformer of the 1990s was hounded by his party, then abandoned to face trials for corruption, until just before his death in 2004.

Being seen to rally around Mr Singh makes better sense, especially if Congress can somehow accuse the government of trying to win unfair political advantage from a trial. For the moment, Mr Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have mostly stayed sensibly silent about it. Congress is speaking up, though, especially its younger leaders. Jyotiraditya Scindia, an MP and friend of Mr Gandhi who is rising in the party, says Congress is “300% behind Mr Singh”.

Congress is still stuck in the doldrums, however. Its fate now probably depends on how far other parties fill the space it has lost. In Delhi that means the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) led by Arvind Kejriwal, a former anti-corruption campaigner, who is secular, populist and a vocal critic of Mr Modi. The chief minister of the national capital territory wants AAP to expand to other states, including Punjab. To do that, he needs first to address divisions in his own party, as rival leaders accuse him of being autocratic and “unilateral”. But at least Mr Kejriwal, despite ill health, shows he has energy and ambition. Few would say the same of Mr Gandhi.

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