The infighting in the Punjab unit of the Congress is showing no signs of abating with a fresh war of words erupting with Congress leader and member of the rebellious G-23, as they are known, Manish Tiwari wading into an already complicated issue by taking a dig at the unit and accusing them of squabbling like children.
“However in my over 40 years @INCIndia I have never seen such chaos and anarchy as what is playing out in @INCPunjab today. Repeated open defiance of AICC by a PCC President, colleagues squabbling publicly with each other like children. Guttural language against each other that even fishwives would not use. For the past 5 months it has been @INCPunjab,” Tiwari said in a thread of tweets. “Do we think that people of Punjab are not disgusted by this daily soap opera? The irony is that those who complained loudest of transgressions and aberrations, were unfortunately and continue to be, the worst offenders themselves,” Tiwari added.
The bitter infighting that has been dragging on for months now has led to a change in chief minister, a change in the state party president, and now even a change in the AICC observer hasn’t helped the party’s cause. Such a level of indecision is bound to leave an impression on the minds of the voters of the current state of the party that won’t be limited to Punjab but is likely to traverse to all the five states that are going to the polls after the turn of the new year.
In such a scenario, the analogy used by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his address to ‘swayampurna mitras’ on Saturday to remain ‘focussed on the goal’ seems to be missing in Congress.
“In football, whether it is defence or forward, everyone is goal-oriented. Someone has to save a goal while others have to score goals. The feeling of achieving each other's goal has never been short in Goa, but the earlier governments lacked a team spirit, they could not create a positive environment. For a long time, political selfishness would take a toll on good governance,” the Prime Minister said in his televised address. Congress would be wise to take his advice irrespective of the source.
In Goa, Congress, which has managed to tackle voices of discontent within the party, cannot afford to slip from here because there are parties like Aam Aadmi Party and the Trinamool Congress that are breathing down its neck in an attempt to project themselves as the real alternative to the BJP. They have made overtures to several local politicians besides flooding the state with ‘high-level’ national leaders as they attempt to open their accounts.
It would be wise for the Congress high command to get its act together and ask the various squabbling party leaders to fall in line and think of the overall goal rather than their narrow interests. What we have seen is that the leadership has failed to assert itself and put up a roadmap. Armchair politics has no takers in current times.
