Doomed speaker

By N.V. Subramanian (14 July 2008)

14 July 2008: Does a speaker remain a representative of the party that elected him once he becomes a speaker? Yes and no. It is this ambiguity that Somnath Chatterjee is harping on in his desire to continue remaining Lok Sabha speaker after the party that elected him, the CPI-M, withdrew support to the Manmohan Singh government.

Even though most of our readers know the story, it is worth recapping in short. When the CPI-M general secretary, Prakash Karat, handed over to President Pratibha Patil a list of the Left-CPI-M MPs who had withdrawn support to the government, Chatterjee's name was included. The speaker is the CPI-M MP from Bolpur which has now become a reserved constituency.

According to the newspapers, Chatterjee was upset that his name was included in the list to the President. He claimed he was not even informed. When confronted with this, Karat confirmed the speaker's name was on the list, and the next step - whether or not to resign - was entirely up to Somnath Chatterjee.

It is of course not so simple. Chatterjee dug his heels in. He said he was a consensus choice for speaker, and that he was not elected as the nominee of any party. Whether or not he resigned was entirely his discretion, and his office advised not to drag it - and him - into controversies. But Chatterjee did meet his mentor, Jyoti Basu, and apparently spoke about resigning his Lok Sabha membership. Basu, in turn, advised him to stay loyal to the party line, which would mean voting against the Manmohan Singh government on the Indo-US nuclear deal.

Unless Somnath Chatterjee becomes absolutely defiant, he will, in all likelihood, accept Basu's counsel. But does he have any ground for his previous stand? If you approach the question from the time he became speaker, ambiguities arise, but not if you go to the roots, to his election, on a CPI-M ticket.

If Somnath Chatterjee had not been given the CPI-M ticket from Bolpur, he may have been elected, but very likely, he would not have been. As an independent from Bolpur, it is unlikely anyone would have made him Lok Sabha speaker. So, not only Somnath Chatterjee won from Bolpur because of the CPI-M, it is CPI-M lobbying that got him speakership. If the CPI-M leadership, let us say, Prakash Karat, had been opposed, Chatterjee didn't have a hope in hell of becoming Lok Sabha speaker. It may be argued that in the CPI-M, the likes of Jyoti Basu plugged for him, and Karat agreed. But the point still remains that if the CPI-M had not collectively backed Chatterjee, he wouldn't have been speaker.

Whatever Jyoti Basu's personal interest in advancing Somnath Chatterjee's political career, Karat & Co would not have agreed unless there was benefit for the CPI-M. This is how political calculations are made. It now appears that one of the conditions for the CPI-M to support the Manmohan Singh government was that Chatterjee would be made speaker. A speaker can be a powerful referee, gatekeeper and minder, and while theoretically neutral, can still propel the interests of the ruling establishment or coalition. When the Jharkhand governor attempted to subvert the electoral verdict favouring the BJP/ NDA by pushing the luck of the Congress-led UPA, and the Supreme Court intervened, Somnath Chatterjee attempted to give it a bogus legislative versus judiciary angle, for which he was justly criticized.

At any rate, Somnath Chatterjee's present contention that he was no party's nominee for the speaker's post but a consensus choice is only half-true. A consensus Lok Sabha speaker is anyway no longer a novelty, since it involves a ruling establishment/ opposition trade-off on the deputy speaker, and so forth. And if the CPI-M had not nominated Somnath Chatterjee, he would have remained a senior, but a regular party MP, not a speaker.

It is true that a speaker has to be neutral, though neither Chatterjee nor his predecessors are/ were strictly so. But that speaker neutrality does not asunder his parent party's legitimate claim on his membership of Parliament. In the event of a tie, the speaker does vote, and since the ruling majority nominates him, he votes for the majority. So the speaker does vote in a pinch, takes sides, despite claims of neutrality. Trouble is that the complexion of the ruling majority has just changed, and the speaker comes in the bloc of MPs that have withdrawn support to the government. The speaker cannot claim an existence in Parliament independent of the party that elected him. Since it is a confidence vote, there can be no exercise of a conscience vote.

Should Prakash Karat have included the speaker's name in the list to the President? Frankly, why not? Somnath Chatterjee is first a CPI-M MP, and then speaker. He gains life in Parliament from the party that elected him. You cannot disown your parents. Karat did no wrong. Perhaps, he may have been more tactful, but he may have wished to force Somnath out, knowing he would resist.

And Somnath overly protests that once a speaker, always a speaker. The criminally incompetent Union home minister, Shivraj Patil, was one of Somnath's predecessors. A convention was sought to be established some years ago that governors would be discouraged from re-entering active politics. Well, we just had S.M.Krishna doing the tandav to be Karnataka chief minister, except that the Congress lost. And Maharashtra's chief minister-in-waiting, Sushil Kumar Shinde, the present disastrous Union power minister, was governor for a time. When retired election commissioners can join active politics and become ministers, where is any sanctity left?

Two or multiple wrongs don't make a right. But Somnath Chatterjee is in the untenable position of claiming an independent existence as speaker that simple does not obtain. Taking Jyoti Basu's sensible advice, he should forthwith resign as the Lok Sabha speaker, and abide by the CPI-M's decision to vote against the government. Certainly, if he supports the Indo-US nuclear deal, against the better instincts of the CPI-M, or is merely sympathetic to the Manmohan Singh government, he has the option of leaving the Lok Sabha altogether. But if he wishes to remain an MP, he cannot be speaker if the CPI-M has other plans.

At the terminal stages of his long political career, Somnath Chatterjee is doing his image no good by prolonging his doomed speakership.

N.V.Subramanian is Editor, NewsInsight.net.