Party hopping antics before the election : No question of principles
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: September 01, 2021 -

Political players. Mark them out from the politicians, the ones who are wedded to the ideology and beliefs of the party to which they belong to.

And it is the antics of the political players that would be fun to watch, especially for those who are in the field of collecting and disseminating news to the public everyday.

In other words, good and spicy days for the reporters, the Sub-Editors and the Editors of the daily newspapers and the news channels in Imphal.

And obviously the two big parties to watch out for are the Congress and the BJP.

As things stand, Manipur has already seen how a Congress candidate in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections took no time to change colours and paint himself with saffron all over.

Same thing is with another heavy weight from the Congress, who went all the way to New Delhi to be saffronised and one is left asking whether there are any true Congressman or BJPman in the State.

For the BJP the logic seems simple. Take all the strongmen from the Congress and break the backbone of the party. This also falls in line with their slogan Congress Mukt.

The interesting question is whether a BJP Government led by a former Congress Minister and made up of former Congressmen will actually make it look like a non Congress Government ?

Will a BJP led Government made up of former Congress Ministers make any difference to the people ?

The answer lies with the people and this is where the BJP will need to take extra care.

New governance, this is what the BJP promised and this seems to be fine but if the party is going to be old wine bottled differently it will raise more questions than it can answer.

Learning to be in the Opposition and obviously the Congress here has not learnt this lesson well.

After being in power for 15 years on the trot, it should know something about how the Government works and the merits and demerits of a number of Government Departments.

Unfortunate it is that this has not been utilised to the advantage of the Opposition bench and this is where one finds a party totally at lost.

This is what is hard to accept and if a party is not ready or willing to function as an effective Opposition then rest assured its standing in the eyes of the public will only go down.

The BJP on the other hand should also learn that it is time for them to rear their own brand of leadership and not depend on the deserters from the Congress.

Or if politics is reduced to the understanding of staying in power by any means then it would surely defeat the dreams and ideals of SP Mukherjee, Mahatma Gandhi and Patel.

This is the tragedy that one sees around here and there is nothing to gloss over this.

Waiting for the 2022 polls.