Either there suddenly appears to be little to differentiate between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the other mainstream political parties in the country, or these are just some of the growing up tantrums of the new political formation. From a cursory analysis it appears that AAP has now shown that it is no different from the other parties when it comes to infighting or the need to clampdown on a party member who voices his critical opinion of the leader. We have seen the Congress, the BJP and almost every other political party take not too kindly when party members challenge or criticize the party leader. AAP has done the same, it so appears.
The dissension, if it can be called that, and the response to it came too quickly after the party returned to power, even less than a month from the day it won 67 of the 70 seats, in the Delhi Assembly. It was a win that surprised everybody and had set off hope throughout the country of a new brand of politics. But, AAP’s decision to rein in those it saw as potential dissidents has taken some of the shine off the victory and also marred the party image.
The speed with which the AAP’s national executive voted out Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav from the Political Affairs Committee, while rejecting Arvind Kejriwal’s resignation as National Convenor indicates that the party has not yet grasped the reason of why it has struck a chord with the masses.
Kejriwal is the leader, the face that the party projects to the electorate, the man who can stand on the platform at a campaign meeting and have thousands listening and agreeing with what he says, and what sent those lakhs to the polling booth to vote for AAP.
There is no doubt that APP is today a personality-oriented party, and Kejriwal is that personality. The party needs him. He is as important to the party’s present as to its future. But could it not do without him as National Convener? He is already the chief minister of Delhi and it is in that position that he has to now perform and prove himself. The people have seen him as a campaigner and have endorsed that ability. They need to now see him perform in the seat of power. The first time AAP and Kejriwal formed the government in Delhi, he had quit within 47 days. He needs to complete those five years in the Delhi chief minister’s office. Replacing him as national convener of the party may have given him more time and space to deal with matters of governance rather than of party and send across that message of ability.
If Kejriwal is important to AAP, then so too are Yadav and Bhushan. They are the men who gave the party its ideology, the ideologues who sat in the backroom, brainstormed and prodded the party in the right direction to victory. They are the men who faced the television cameras and journalists and said the right things at the right times. They may not have an electoral base of their own, but their intelligence and inputs are as important as the vote-garnering abilities of Kejriwal. If these two ideologues are no longer in the AAP Political Affairs Committee, then for the present there appears to be little hope that the party can indeed be one with a difference.
Yet, as Yadav said after he was voted out of the PAC, this is not the time to lose hope in the AAP. We don’t know what Yadav may have been referring to, but it is certain that the party is still democratic. The vote to remove Yadav and Bhushan from the party’s highest decision making body was not unanimous, there were eight who voted against this and 11 who voted for their removal. This is so unlike the other political parties where every decision has to be unanimous or at least has to be seen to have been unanimous.
This is what democracy is all about and what makes AAP different from the other political parties. And this is what still allows one to retain hope that AAP is a party with a difference and that it is too soon to give up on it. A party that believes in taking decisions democratically and whose members who have been voted out of the highest decision-taking body are not sulking, says much for AAP and its future in Indian politics.
