MPP : Lost in the days of coalition politics :: Pale shadow of its past
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: September 19, 2014 -

Goes against the grain of coalition politics. The BJP or more precisely Narendra Modi may have demonstrated that the BJP can form a Government on its own sans the support of other political parties after the 2014 Lok Sabha election, but this is an exception.

The elections to the State Assemblies will bear testimony to how important it has become to tie up with other political parties to be a significant political player.

A look at the by elections in some States recently should be ample testimony of the point that is being sought to be stressed here.

This is how it has been for decades and there is nothing much to show that it will change in the coming years. The coming to age of regional political parties.

The emergence of numerous regional political parties such as the AIADMK, DMK, Shiv Sena, Telugu Desam, Akali Dal, BSP, Trinamool Congress and closer home Asom Gana Parishad, Mizo National Front and Democratic Alliance of Nagas are some examples of coalition politics beginning to define power equation not only in Delhi but across the country.

A sure indicator that the days of one party rule are over and there is no single political party which can hold sway all over the country.

It may also be interpreted as an example of regional aspirations catching the fancy of the people. No wonder then that regional satraps have become a force to reckon with and no political party, whether it be the Congress or the BJP can afford to ignore them.

However as is the case with other aspects of life, Manipur has been a different kettle of fish. Different compulsions there may be, but in the last couple of years, far from gaining public acceptability, Manipur has seen a number of regional political parties fading away not only from public memory but also from significance, the prime example being the Manipur Peoples’ Party (MPP).

Hard to say who has actually been responsible for dismantling the Cycle, but it is not a pleasant sight to see the MPP in such a state.

Once the principal party against the Congress, today the MPP is nothing much more than a pale shadow of its earlier avatar.

A party which many looked upon as the alternative to the Congress carrying the local aspirations of the people, today the MPP has sunk to such a level that not many are willing to see it as a political party beyond its office located just behind the historic Mapal Kangjeibung.

For a political party to survive and even excel it may stand that its showing at any Assembly election is meaningful and important, but to equate a political party with only the number of MLAs it manages to send to the Assembly would be mistaking the woods for the trees.

A political party like the MPP should have been able to take the people along with its beliefs and ideologies.

It should also be able to fire the imagination of the people, not through lung power but by demonstrating that it is here to do something meaningful.

That it failed to do so is there for all to see and experience. And this brings the question over the leadership of the party.

Today, the MPP is a party which not only does not have a single MLA in its kitty, but is also largely seen as a political party which is bereft of any ideas on how to revive itself.

To be brutally frank it stands true that a political party which cannot look beyond the location of its office will only end up scripting its own end and this is what the MPP has been doing to itself all these years.