AAP: What Next?

(17 Dec 2013)

Despite the unquestionably clean intention behind all the tall promises made by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) before the Delhi legislative assembly elections, what has all throughout remained unclear is just how Arvind Kejriwal and his team would deliver these. Kejriwal time without count in all public and media appearances he made before the polls reiterated that even though his team was largely inexperienced in politics or administration, they would fulfill the promises armed with the right intention (‘niyat’ in Hindi). Although this may be perceived as an abstract plan for achieving some really high targets, people of Delhi have trusted AAP and almost voted them in. The debut they’ve had cannot be termed anything short of historic. It has clearly been more spectacular than even team Kejriwal would have imagined. And, that precisely is the problem for them today!

It is factual truth they don’t have clear majority and they aren’t the single largest party. If it was the anti-defection law era, the BJP, by virtue of being the party with most number of seats, would have aggressively participated in horse trading and Dr. Harshvardhan would be the Delhi chief minister now. Times have changed. Political parties have realized that the voters aren’t as foolish as they perhaps were earlier. There has been a strong anti-corruption wave in Delhi and political parties understood the importance of projecting a ‘clean’ face in their political transactions and dealings. Thanks to all this, BJP expressed its inability to form the government, and the next obvious constitutional choice was AAP. Now, this is where it gets really tricky for AAP.

Quite expectedly, both Congress and BJP are mounting pressure on AAP to ‘form’ the government with outside support from them. They’ve started attacking the party for what they call avoiding responsibility. Kejriwal’s team have maintained that they do not have decisive people’s mandate, and also due to the stark ideological differences with Congress and BJP, they won’t form an alliance for the sake of governing the state. Quite sadly for AAP, many who voted for them have started questioning Kejriwal on why he, despite being offered ‘unconditional’ support by Congress and ‘constructive’ support by BJP, is reluctant to take charge of the state. Honestly, all that people are worried about and interested in is for AAP to fulfill its poll manifesto. After all, in addition to the anti-corruption stand of the party, it is their promises of significantly subsidized delivery of essential services like electricity and water that have aroused the keenness in voters.

Until now, it’s been a winning plot for AAP. But what is next for them? Other political parties have already started going to the electorate with theories of AAP cheating them, of AAP not being serious about fulfilling their democratic commitments, of AAP shying away from responsibility. Many ardent supporters of AAP have started voicing their displeasure with Kejriwal’s – what some would say – delay tactic by indulging into the unique yet superlatively funny SMS voting!

One only hopes that by doing all it has been doing in the last few days, AAP is not plotting a political hara-kiri!