Executive decisions

Can't we all just get along?” That was Rodney King’s appeal to his fellow Angelenos as their city went up in flames in 1992. What was especially poignant was the fact that the rioting began after four (white) policemen were acquitted though a videotape showed them thrashing the (black) Rodney King. History records that King’s ardent plea went unanswered. When emotions reach a certain point, appeals to reason seem futile.

Parliament is the supreme forum for reasoned debate, but it fell short of that ideal in the rancorous exchanges over Poto. India’s problems seem as tangled as anything woven by Gordius of Phrygia, and there is little hope of reconciliation in the months to come. Looming ahead, to name but one potential source of confrontation, is the election of a new president.

The National Democratic Alliance and the Opposition each have roughly 45 per cent of the votes required. The balance is held by the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Nationalist Congress Party, the AIADMK and various small parties from the Northeast. The stage seems set for another round of bitter words and hard haggling. Or is it?

The problem of the Gordian Knot was solved by Alexander. And, as it happens, India has an Alexander waiting in the wings...

I refer to P.C. Alexander, currently governor of Maharashtra. He has served three Congress prime ministers — Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao — with distinction. The last of those three named him a governor; it says something of Alexander that he was reconfirmed by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee ministry.

If you think it easy to get Rao and Vajpayee to agree on something, I must point out Alexander has succeeded in making the lion lie down with the lamb elsewhere too. I have yet to hear any kind words from the Shiv Sena for Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party, or vice versa, but both parties informally say that they are willing to back Alexander. And across the peninsula even the DMK and the AIADMK could, for a change, be on the same side of the fence. (Alexander served as governor of Tamil Nadu before he was shifted to Maharashtra.)

So, could this be one of those rare occasions when there is concord amongst the politicians? Well, there have been other miracles; five years ago, K.R. Narayanan was raised to the highest office all but unanimously. (The token opposition came with the Shiv Sena backing the former chief election commissioner T.N. Seshan.)

As it happens, I understand that there is some opposition to Alexander’s candidature — and it is coming from unexpected quarters, namely the Congress and the Left Front. Why is the first opposing a man who has served successive Congress ministries so faithfully? Why is the second against a man from Kerala, opposition that shall win the Marxists no friends in one of their few strongholds?

The Congress has nothing against Alexander as an individual, but the party has little confidence in the people of India. The Congress — or at least a section of it — thinks P.C. Alexander’s candidature is part of a conspiracy. They think that with a Christian as the president it will be tougher to convince the electorate that another Christian should be prime minister! (Personally, I think they are just being sillier than usual; there are excellent reasons to object to Sonia Gandhi becoming prime minister, but her religion isn’t one of them.)

Obviously, Congressmen cannot afford to voice their suspicions in precisely those words. Therefore, some of them are trying to raise objections on more technical grounds. For instance, some of them are trying to convince people that it runs against tradition to have two successive men from the same state, Kerala, in Rashtrapati Bhavan. Others wonder whether it is really the done thing to have one former bureaucrat follow another (K.R. Narayanan was in the foreign service for several decades). Pardon me, but do these arguments really make much sense?

Alexander is a man of proven administrative aptitude. He is not associated with any political party. (Narayanan won three elections to the Lok Sabha on a Congress ticket.) Does it really matter which state he hails from, or that he was a bureaucrat before becoming a governor?

Equally valid, is there anyone else who can become president without causing the same bitterness we witnessed in the Poto debate? The Left Front thinks it has the answer: K.R. Narayanan once again. The Marxists like him because he is seen as one of the Socialist Old Guard in this age of economic liberalisation. But will President Narayanan run once more?

I suppose he might — if he could be elected unanimously. But this is highly unlikely. While the president is acknowledged to have done a good job, there are sections in the National Democratic Alliance who would be less than enthusiastic about giving him another five-year term. (Nobody but Dr Rajendra Prasad has had that honour.)

If it cannot be K.R. Narayanan or P.C. Alexander, who can it be? There is no shortage of potential candidates, to be honest.

The most obvious is the current vice-president. Some have dropped the names of L.M. Singhvi and Karan Singh. And the irrepressible Ram Jethmalani has already announced that he is interested. (Although I must say damning the members of the electoral college as dumb cattle obeying the party whip is not, in my opinion, calculated to win friends!)

Under other circumstances, I think we could be happy with any of them in Rashtrapati Bhavan. But the problem is that it will be tough, almost impossible, to build a consensus around any of them. Karan Singh, for instance, is a scholar and a gentleman — but the BJP will remember him as the Congress candidate who stood from Lucknow in the last general election. Singhvi is associated with the BJP — meaning that the Congress shall feel almost honour bound to vote against him. And so it goes...

Close-fought elections are exciting, but do we need any more contentious votes? If consensus is required, P.C. Alexander is the man of the hour. I return to where I started: can we all just get along — or will it be more riotous scenes and bitterness?

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