ECI's blow to the MPP" Mid-life blues ?
- Sangai Express Editorial :: April 2, 2013 -

Time to write its epitaph or is it a case of the 'ups and downs' in the journey of a political party, as Mr O Joy put it. The answer may just lie somewhere in between, for writing the epitaph of the Manipur People's Party now may just border on the premature and dismissing the latest blow from the Election Commission of India, which has come in the form of de-recognising it as a State political party, as nothing much more than the proverbial 'ups and downs' of life would amount to refusing to acknowledge the truth. Or is the MPP experiencing, what is commonly known as mid life blues ? In nine months or so, the MPP will complete 45 years of existence and in the last four decades or so since its inception, perhaps it has never been this 'low'. It is not only about the party failing to send a single representative to the House of 60, but is also about the overall reach and appeal of the party. From a party which once posed the biggest challenge to the Congress, today it has been reduced to the status of a part time player, hopelessly out of tune with the aspirations of the common people. The poverty of idea and energy to inject that life saving shot is palpably real. The birth place of some of the political stalwarts of the State, the MPP is today not even a pale shadow of its earlier days. Time to seriously introspect and retrospect. It is not the strength of the other political parties which has weakened the MPP but its own internal weaknesses. This is fact number one and the sooner the leaders of the party take cognizance of this the better it would be for the health of the party. Restructuring the party may be just what the doctor would prescribe. Where is the youth wing of the oldest regional political party in the State ? Does it have a student wing ? How about its Mahila branch ? Why have no thoughts been given to these all important points ? Tending the nursery fields. This is a fundamental of running or managing a political party and unfortunately this all important point does not seem to have registered in the minds of successive leaderships of the party.

A weak MPP certainly does not bode well for the people and the place. This is all that more so when political equations across the country have changed dramatically since the latter part of the 1990s when regional political parties managed to emerge from the shadow of political parties like the Congress, the BJP and the Left led CPI and CPI (M). The curtain seems to have been drawn over one party rule and increasingly it is about striking the right deal with regional political parties. With only two MPs in the Lok Sabha and one MP in the Rajya Sabha, no regional party in Manipur will have the leverage to strike a handsome deal with any of the bigger political parties in the country, this is a given. The matter of greater import, however, is to understand the changing political equations across the country and not only at election time and the question is whether the MPP has demonstrated its willingness to cope and move with the changes ? Given its present state, the answer would most probably be in the negative. The failure to groom and train the next generation of party leaders, the scheming within, the inability to understand the changing aspirations of the people at the grass root level and the abject failure to note the writings on the wall, have all combined together to script the pathetic situation that the MPP finds itself in today. The road to recovery can come only from within and with a new man as its president, it would be in the fitness of things for the party to inject fresh blood into its system and strengthen its organisational set up. Not an easy task, but a beginning has to be made.