All is not well in the Congress party, even though Okram Ibobi Singh was sworn in as the Chief Minister for a third term. CM Ibobi loyalists including some party heavyweights are opposed to the idea of elevating state Congress chief Gaikhangam to the post of Deputy Chief Minister, while it appears Gaikhangam refuses to be sworn in as a mere Cabinet Minister under O Ibobi Singh. With memos flying in from both the camps to the AICC High Command, the Chief Minister rushed to New Delhi with Gaikhangam and the AICC Manipur incharge Luzinho Falerio a few hours after the swearing in ceremony.
The newly elected Congress MLAs had earlier surrendered their right to choose a leader from among themselves, to the party high command. There are enough speculations on the decision of party President Sonia Gandhi or for that matter the formula worked out by the party high command in the Manipur leadership issue. Has the high command decided in favor of Gaikhangam as the Deputy CM? If that is so, why are they objecting to the decision now? Whatever be the tradition in the Congress party, we are not enamored with the top-down approach in deciding state leadership issues. Look at the recent Uttarkhand example, wherein majority of the newly elected Congress MLAs are objecting to the high command’s decision to usher in Vijay Bahuguna as the new Chief Minister. Of the 32 Congress MLAs in the 70-member Uttarkhand Legislative Assembly, 24 Congress MLAs boycotted the swearing-in ceremony of Vijay Bahuguna. The crisis is boiling over with another CM aspirant Harish Rawat resigning from the Union Cabinet.
Manipur’s case is different. The leadership issue has been settled with the swearing-in of Okram Ibobi Singh as the Chief Minister for the third consecutive term. The dispute, it appears, is over the compromise formula worked out by the party High Command. Going by the track record of High Command decisions with regard to Manipur, it is always wary of Okram Ibobi Singh becoming too powerful. We have seen enough examples of that in the selection of party nominees to the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha, when the High Command rejected CM Ibobi proposal to nominate his own men by nominating veteran leader and former CM Rishang Keishing in the Rajya Sabha and Dr T Meinya Singh in the Lok Sabha, and again in rejecting Ibobi’s candidate for the post of MPCC President, which went in favour of Gaikhangam. Further, CM Ibobi Singh could not act against dissident Minister Yumkham Erabot, despite his open criticism of CM Ibobi Singh. Erabot was Gaikhangam’s man in the Ibobi Cabinet. Gaikhangam had been a Cabinet Minister in the first Ibobi led SPF government. But he had resigned following differences with the Chief Minister. He refrained from joining the SPF II citing the ‘One Man One Post’ principle. Besides this tussle, the selection of 11 MLAs from among the 42 elected MLAs is going to be a headache for the Chief Minister, this time. CM Ibobi Singh would certainly have his preferences for inclusion in the government. But, he has also to think of the remaining 30 MLAs who would not be ministers and who would be ever ready to jump the gun. So, he might also be thinking that it is best left to the party High Command even for the composition of his own ministry. But, things are not that easy in politics. Okram Ibobi is not a person who would easily surrender his prerogative or command of the government that he is heading. Despite his past mistakes and indifference to basic issues, ten years at the helm of state affairs has given him enough rope or strings to pull in politics whether in New Delhi or in the state. Yet, he must also understand that the time has come to mend fences with his rivals in the party in the interest of the state.
Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2012/03/time-to-mend-fences/
