They were supposed to be a formidable duo.
His credibility and her authority, it was meant to be a dream combination come true.
He kept his side of the bargain and did what every faithful political appointee would do.
But when it came to the crunch she did not deliver on the political goods.
Now he is left picking up the pieces and coming up with excuses
So how much political capital did Sonia Gandhi really expend on the Indo-US Nuclear deal ?
Not an awful lot if one actually pays attention to facts.
Let us start with July of 2005 when Manmohan Singh hit it off with U.S. President George Bush on the Nuclear Agreement. This BBC news story sums up the political mood in the nation at that time, not a whole lot from Sonia Gandhi in public in defense of the agreement. Then in Aug 2005 she cancels a U.S. visit and keeps her distance from being directly commited to the deal. The Hindu also reports how Manmohan Singh uses Natwar Singh to sell the deal to fellow Congressmen, highlighting the distance Sonia Gandhi maintains from the deal.
Feb 26th 2006 is the first time Sonia Gandhi utters something significant on the Nuclear Deal in public. The occassion a Congress Parliamentary Party meet. So did she go all out in support of it to rally party opinion ?
Not quite. In fact she treads a politically correct line.
Noting that Iran nuclear and Indo-US nuclear deal issues are under “intense public scrutiny”, Gandhi said “we welcome the opportunity for a debate in both the Houses of Parliament.”
Sonia Gandhi continues to be reluctant to go all out in support of the deal through President Bush’s visit and only belatedly endorses it not through a public speech or statement but in a signed statement in print in the Congress mouth piece Sandesh. This piece in The Hindu sums up the mood in 2006 very well on how little political capital the Prime Minister has to push his agenda.
July 23rd 2006 the first vocal protest by the Left in a UPA Coordination Committee meeting, again no public soundbites from Sonia Gandhi, it is left to underling Anand Sharma to defend the deal.
August 2006 the Indian Express reports that Sonia Gandhi has fully backed Manmohan Singh on the Nuclear deal, not in a public setting, but in a private meeting with Sitaram Yechury. Most of the public posturing in Parliament is by Pranab Mukherjee and Priyaranjan Dasmunshi trying to fend off a “sense of the house” resolution on the Indo-US Nuclear deal. But the more interesting public political statement comes not from Sonia Gandhi but from Lalu Yadav pledging complete support and that he will stand behind her like a rock.
As early as Nov 2006 Prakash Karat was quite clear on throwing a spoke in the UPA’s wheel on the Nuclear Deal. Even at this stage there is not much from Sonia Gandhi in selling the deal to either the allies, or to the party or the people at large. In fact when the U.S. Senate votes on the deal in Nov of 2006, the only reaction from Sonia Gandhi is laden with abundance of caution expressing more doubts than confidence.
It is interesting to note that U.S. Secretary of State Condy Rice had expended more capital than Sonia Gandhi when it comes to lobbying law makers on the deal in their respective countries. In fact this piece in the TOI analyzing the year that was for Sonia Gandhi makes for some amusing reading where it talks about Sonia Gandhi’s behind the scenes influence and Manmohan Singh’s expending of political capital.
So all of 2006 there was barely any political capital Sonia Gandhi expended on the Nuclear Deal, she may have nudged things in the backroom but she hardly rallied the party, allies or public in support of the deal.
2007 begins with some silly remarks by Sonia Gandhi on nuclear weapons being a compulsion. She pontificates on Nuclear Disarmament but says nothing to rally support for the Nuclear Deal.?In fact all of 2007 one hardly sees her come out openly making the political case or shaping public opinion for the deal. The most she does is yet another signed letter in the Congress Sandesh complimenting Manmohan Singh and his team for negotiating a good deal in Sept of 2007.
The first time Sonia Gandhi makes a forceful political argument in support of the deal in a public rally is on October 9th in Jhajjhar in Haryana only to water down her remarks in less than 24 hours and to finally clarify and qualify her remarks a week later with the now infamous climbdown at the Hindustan Times Summit. This piece by Varghese George in the Indian Express says it all on how little support she rallied.
The latest spin is that the deal has only been paused and that a new timeline it will be worked out with the Americans. Its another story that the deal got the momentum it did because it was a second term Bush Presidency with little in the domestic agenda in its favor and a lot of negatives internationally had the focus and attention to see the deal through. 18 months from now that will not be the case and India will figure at the bottom in the list of priorities of a new administration looking to make a clean break from the past and Bush fatigue.
How deluded we can get with our spin at times ?
With just 2 signed letters and one forceful public speech that was watered down in less than 24 hours Sonia Gandhi has not really expended any political capital in support of the Nuclear Deal contrary to popular perception. She did not stake her credibility on it which explains why she was able to pull back so easily .
Offstumped Bottomline: The division of labor between the Congress President and the Prime Minister required that he deliver a good a deal and she deliver the political goods to see it through. He kept his side of the bargain while she?came woefully short on hers. If the Prime Minister is feeling let down today he knows quite well where the blame lies. He has been reduced to a lameduck with his authority in tatters while she gets away not having lost much at all.
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Yossarin,
Well I disagree for most part !!
Firstly, it still does not answer what I asked in prior post, why should MMS & Sonia be at cross purposes? What is the malafide that you are insinuating on her part? And why should there be a malafide?
Hindsight is a 20/20 vision. Now that the events have unfolded, it is easy to go back & attribute designs on Sonia’s actions but…..if you see at Sonia/MMS arrangement on ALL matters, SG hardly ever interferes or invests “poltical capital”, as you say,in any matter. It is just not her style. And whatever little she does, it invites criticism from detractors ( And there are many unreasonable one’s) about her “official” locus standi, Italian origin blah blah. Nuclear deal was where she had spent the MAXIMUM. She concured that the the deal is in line with what PM had assured in the parliament, when things started to heat up,( I can dig out the dates & articles as well, but I am sure you will remember this) and the Haryana speech was as forceful as one could get. The watering down was in relation to left, not in terms of her support for the deal. If the spin says the remarks were not for left, maybe your interpretation that she withdrew her support to the deal, is a lil unfair !!
Your entire post is based on the insinuation that SG was not serious at all about nuclear deal, she knew it would fall through, she knew MMS would have to eat crow, it will be avictory of sorts for her in her ambition to show MMS his rightful place…….and for all of this, I repeat I am yet to read the “basis” on which you make these charges !!
Nikhil my friend you read far too much into this post. I am just saying she is incompetent. She mismanaged the political end while he kept his end of the bargain from the government. He expended everything he had and ends up taking a beating, her political mismanagement on the other hand inflicts no cost on her personally. She gets away with the incompetence becoz she expended nothing.
Yossarin, Incompetency is a far less serious charge as compared to malafide. It is like that Winston Churchil reposte to the charge of being drunken, that the lady was ugly !!!
Incompetence is reversible. And my reading is that the Haryana speech had expended as much as she possible could !! And within a day, she had to retract much like the PM…and that is quite embarassing for both of them.
But as a political observer, I do remember the numbers arithmatic in parliament, that leaves them with little choice in this case. At most I would call both their belligerent statements a mistimed case of political brinkmanship….that failed. And we know why !!!
Not irreversible in this case my friend. You can be incompetent in your pocket borough or your family biz unlimited aka congress party. But you can’t be incompetent in staking national credibility in a deal with the americans and then hope it was all a bad dream. This incompetence comes at a significant national and international cost. If mms went out on a limb to sell this deal and SG barely moved a muscle to deliver the political support – who is to blame mms or sg ? Face it she let him down badly on this
Not reversible
I agree that national credibility will take a serious beating in case the deal does not come through!! ( And I would like to believe the honourable MMS when he says he has not given up on the deal)
In case you really want to play the blame game, there are two PRIME culprits you have kept out of the picture. One is LEFT who think 61MPs are reason enough to stake international credibility. MMS/SG are compelled, but left are not. The next culprits are Indians themselves. If they choose to vote based on divisive interests and give a fractured mandate like this ( And this has been a pattern since 1989) expect more such incidents to happen. Why not give any one party, congress, BJP, mayawati anyone…..but one party, enough political strength to be able to act the way they want to.
Yes, MMS/SG retracting is a big loss. But their compulsions are understandable/visible. Whereas I do not see any such compulsions on the part of left/voting public.
when dimwits reject the deal based on considerations like getting close to the US, potential loss of muslim support (ridiculous?), etc, we can’t expect any better..
And, MMS and Sonia do not have anything close to leadership abilities, to sell the deal to their own party members let alone the general public.. the selling points should have been continuous power supply et al. instead of the emphasis on US..
>> Its another story that the deal got the momentum it did because it was a second term Bush Presidency with little in the domestic agenda in its favor and a lot of negatives internationally had the focus and attention to see the deal through.
This aspect of the deal hasn’t been properly addressed by the media. I not only agree with Yossarin that Sonia Gandhi is so incompetent that she could not have helped even if she wanted to, I have doubts even about MMS.
Probably even MMS is not competent enough to understand or push through the deal. The deal went from “in the works” to “signed and sealed” in less than 3 months. Except Anil Kakodkar’s intervention, I don’t think much work was done from the Indian side in that 3 month period.
So in all probability Bush administration decided to get this done and claim credit for “Indo-US strategic partnership”. MMS not knowing anything substantial about the deal, simply shoved it down our throat after US made some token concessions like reprocessing spent fuel.
People like Anil Kakodkar must have been under tremendous pressure to play ball with this “Bush/MMS legacy project” sometime this summer. Hence a half-cooked deal was “signed and sealed” which could neither impress the willing BJP nor the unwilling left.
The most glaring admission of this Dubya farce came two days ago when Condoleesa Rice claimed that “there is a need for a Palestine state now”. Can you believe this? These dumbheads delivering a Palestinian state in the 11th hour of their presidency? Their India project failed. The dubyas are now gonna focus the rest of their term in screwing Palestine.
-Balaji.
So it clearly shows who the PM is. I am sure MMS got the maharani’s approval before negotiating deal with the Americans. She back stabbed him by not backing him up. MMS’s ultimatum in Kolkatta’s paper couldn’t have come without maharani’s okay – because he doesn’t run the party or the politics.
Senile idiots from the Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra talked the maharani out when she appeared to support MMS. That Harayana’s speech came soon after her visit to US, with her yuva raja, where the talk was all about 123 agreement – about turn in 24 hours.
Thanks to commies, everyone in UPA continues to rack in the money for 18 more months. The deal is pretty much dead without Bush. Hillary Clinton’s team will reopen the deal if we go back because there are lot more NPA in her team. Giuliani could care less about the deal. And it’s hard to take India seriously on any deal any more.
Does MMS now realise what value was Pamulaparthi Venkata Narasimha Rao of ?
Does he now understand that only selected babus cannot, cannot and cannot drum up things in the absence of a conducive political climate which needs statesmanship to build and not vague interviews plannned by poor advisors of the coterie to newspeddlers of the Telegraph kind ?
well folks losing track of the number of flip flops MMS has done on this, at this time all one can do is yaaaawwn and wait for Gujarat to go to polls
[...] Offstumped re-run from 16th October 2007 on how little political capital Sonia Gandhi has spent to date in pushing the Indo-US Nuclear [...]
[...] Offstumped post on Sonia Gandhi’s refusal to invest political capital [...]
May be of interest.
Congress Top Leaders Took Kickbacks from Russian Firm: Interpol
http://newspostindia.com/report-60755