Behind the BJP’s defeat: all noise and negativity

The Hindu, May 21, 2009

by Neena Vyas

The party’s campaign was seen to have brought into focus a range of unfavourable images

NEW DELHI: Back in Delhi after his defeat in Rampur, one of the two Muslim faces of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, confessed that the hysterical campaign in his constituency between two high-profile women candidates, Noor Bano of the Congress and Jayaprada of the Samajwadi Party, had left little space for him. But what hit him the hardest was the ‘Varun effect’ felt all across — from the Terai region to the hills of Uttarakhand. No wonder, in some regions the party got “wiped out.”

While the BJP has yet to get down to the grim business of poring over the election results to making sense of it — a “chintan baithak” (brainstorming session) will be held later — partymen have in their individual capacities begun to express their views.

Some of the factors that led to the BJP losing 20-plus Lok Sabha seats are slowly beginning to get recognised. The ‘Varun effect’, the din of the ‘Advani for PM’ campaign, the mid-campaign discovery of the virtues of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as a prime ministerial candidate, the strident and negative campaign against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, not to forget the public spat between general secretary Arun Jaitley and president Rajnath Singh at the start of the election process, generated negative vibes with the voter.

Even now, after the decisive defeat, the party presents the sad spectacle of its prime ministerial candidate, L.K. Advani, insisting that he would not retain the position of Leader of the Opposition and then being easily “persuaded” to stay, all in a span of 24 hours. Already there are reports of infighting among party leaders for the post of Leader of the Opposition, as and when, and if at all, a change is effected.

There is the realisation, even at the senior levels, that ‘Hindus’ cannot be consolidated into one vote-bank at the national level merely by hitting out against the minorities through poisonous speeches.
Hate speeches

To take the ‘Varun effect’ first: both Mr. Naqvi and the party’s only Muslim MP, Shahnawaz Hussain, were quick to denounce the hate speeches in Pilibhit. They warned senior party leaders that those would have a disastrous effect in Uttar Pradesh, besides carrying the unsavoury message across the country that the BJP cannot be a party of governance if it was seen to encourage abuse of religious minorities.

But their plea fell on deaf ears, as some leaders began fantasising about the “positive impact” that Mr. Gandhi’s hate-speeches would have by raising the Hindutva temperature and the BJP’s chances of a spectacular recovery in Uttar Pradesh.

Wiser after the results, some people in the BJP now say the poison not only helped consolidate the Muslim vote for the Congress but encouraged tactical voting against the BJP by the minority community.

Then, mid-way through the campaign senior leaders including Arun Shourie, Arun Jaitley and Yashwant Sinha began recounting the prime ministerial qualities of Mr. Modi. They were forgetting the fact that only a few weeks earlier the Supreme Court had asked the Special Investigation Team working under its supervision to look into Mr. Modi’s role in the 2002 Gujarat riots.

The ‘Modi will make a good PM’ line also received an immediate rebuff from some of the BJP’s allies, notably the Janata Dal (United).
Blame

For the high-pitched ‘Advani for PM’ campaign, the blame is being squarely laid at the doors of Mr. Advani’s office, not the BJP’s official campaign committee. The ‘Advani 4 PM’ SMS campaign; the in-your-face Advani website pop-ups on innumerable Internet sites; the well-publicised meetings Mr. Advani had with captains of industry, water experts, strategic analysts and so on, were all planned and executed from the office of the prime minister-in-waiting.

“Did that help the party?” To this simple question most party leaders say: “You should ask the people who planned it.”
Question of decency

One senior leader admitted that the attacks on Mr. Manmohan Singh — mostly by Mr. Advani himself, but also by party spokespersons — violated the normal sense of decency that most ordinary Indians have. Many Indians would have disliked the personal attack on a decent and honest man, an unassuming personality and a competent Prime Minister, one BJP leader said.

The mazboot neta (strong leader Advani) and “weak Prime Minister Manmohan Singh” slogans were laid to rest as soon as the Prime Minister responded to those repeated attacks, but the damage had been done. And the very first ‘byte’ party president Rajnath Singh gave the media after the results came in was that the BJP missed Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the campaign. It was a resounding acknowledgement of the fact that Mr. Advani was not quite Mr. Vajpayee, and that despite his gruelling campaign that involved 130 election rallies, the most by any leader in the campaign, the people were simply not impressed.

Finally, the negative images brought into focus by the party’s campaign of a people traumatised by terrorism, poverty and hunger and without any hope, did not strike the right note. The BJP failed to create any positive buzz about hope for the despairing and the oppressed.