By Sushil Kutty
BJP discard Arun Shourie is painting a black picture for the Opposition: Forget old arguments, grudges, get together, field one candidate against BJP in each constituency or kiss democracy goodbye. Scaring the pants off bhakt-baiters and #UrbanNaxals, who will do full shashtang before any god who delivers them Modi-Shah scalps, the ex-editor without much ado transferred his desperation to others in the building.
“2019 is last chance for opposition, for democracy,” he warned at a conclave of the 2014 dispossessed. “If Narendra Modi becomes PM again, forget your future as a democracy. There won’t be any free and fair elections, ever.” So, why didn’t this dawn on him in 2014 when he was egging people to vote BJP?
Has Modi become a dictator in four-and-a-half-years and wants to like lifetime President Xi Jinping become lifetime Prime Minister? Don’t forget good friend Donald Trump has given his stamp of approval to Xi. The three of them can pitch tent in Gobi desert and rule the world with hummers parked on the new Silk Road!
Returning to Mr. Desperate Shourie, why is he still with The Dictator, why this unholy lagaav with the BaJaPa? Can’t he cut the crap and cut to the chase by quitting the BJP and becoming one of the combined opposition candidates? Or, is he banking on the outside chance that the BJP will not end up single-largest party, sense will come to the NDA and the Modi-Shah duo will lose more than just face?
But Shourie seems to also say that the BJP is so well placed that unless the Opposition gets into a one-size-fits-all Gambino jacket, 100% chance the BJP will get majority. The 2014-dispossessed can take it in two ways, either the Opposition falls in line or falls in disarray. Shourie has kept the key to the panic room out in the open.
And just so that people don’t start running scared, Shourie told the room, “Don’t believe the myth Modi is so mighty unbeatable the Opposition will be not be able to provide an alternative. Wasn’t there an alternative for Indira Gandhi in 1977, for Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2004?” That settled, he quoted late PM Chandrashekhar: “The people have a way of solving problems that leaders are unable to do. And when the people strike, they don’t just slap, they deliver a body blow.”
He reminded the Opposition of two sets of numbers, 31-69 and 60-90. “Thirty-one percent was the vote share Modi polled at the height of his popularity in 2014; he is today less popular. So the opposition’s starting number is 69% of the vote.” Second, Modi won 90% of seats in states that contribute 60% of the Lok Sabha strength. “If the opposition combines in just three states – Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra – it will be impossible for Modi to win 90% of the seats again,” he said.
Emphatic that Modi was only a side-show and that in reality Shah ‘was King’, “Shourie said a “new leadership” awaits India in Jignesh Mevani, Kanhaiya Kumar, Alpesh Thakor and Hardik Patel. They are the new leadership.
“There is no party anymore,” he said about BJP. “This is both a government and party of one and three-quarters men, and the ‘one’ is Amit Shah and not Modi, who busied himself making speeches and in event and image management while it was Shah who was wielding the coercive power of the state by directing the functioning of various agencies.” Is that so? (IPA Service)
The post Shourie Says Opposition In Last Chance Saloon appeared first on Newspack by India Press Agency.
