Fated to repeat

A famous philosopher George Santayana had once said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Applying the phrase, the Congress party in Meghalaya was condemned to repeat in 2022 what the party in Nagaland had done in 2015. The Congress in Meghalaya, split when 12 Congress legislators led by former chief minister Mukul Sangma joined the Trinamool Congress in November last year). The remaining five Congress MLAs rebounded and made a monumental decision to not sit on the opposition aisle with TMC led by Mukul Sangma. The Meghalaya Congress crossed over to the ruling side and announced support to the ruling MDA government led by NPP supremo and chief minister Conrad Sangma in December last year. Then in February 8, the five Congress legislators in Meghalaya decided to formally join the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance(MDA). Joining the MDA government will mean that ministerial berth(s) or appointments as advisors would be rewards for the Congress legislators. In Nagaland, after eight Congress legislators joined the DAN-III coalition with some made minister or advisors in May, they eventually merged with the NPF in November the same year. It also led Nagaland legislative assembly creating a history of sorts in becoming an opposition-less house and ruled by an-all party government. The Congress party has therefore repeated the 2015 Nagaland event in Meghalaya in 2022. The split in the Congress in Meghalaya was triggered after Mukul Sangma defected with 11 others when he took exception to the party high command appointing Vincent Pala MP as the state unit president “without consulting him”. Mukul was irked with the Congress party high command for taking the decision and succumbed to the overtures of TMC strategist Prashant Kishor to join the party. Even Ampareen Lyngdoh, the leader of the five-member Congress legislature, when asked if the party high command was informed, said “there is a big distance between us and those who dictate to us. No other external force would decide for us.” This clearly meant that the five legislators are not going to listen to the party high command irrespective of the consequences, as they have chosen to reassert their prerogative under a totally different local environment. If there is anything significant that can be said about why the Congress is undoing itself is lack of deep rooted commitment to the party’s ideology which has led to many defecting to ruling parties. The other is the inherent disconnect of the party high command with the socio-political reality. In Nagaland, the Congress suffered consecutive defeats beginning with the 2003 election where, despite having won 21 to the NPF’s 19, it wasn’t able to form the government. The Congress in Nagaland again lost the 2008 election winning 23 seats to the NPF’s 26. Two successive loses proved fatal as the Congress party was reduced to a single-digit entity with eight MLAs in 2013. After eight MLAs joined NPF, the Congress became extinct in the 2018 election when it drew a blank for the first time in its history in Nagaland. In both cases in Nagaland and Meghalaya, the Congress joined a rival ruling alliance in which BJP is a pre-poll partner. It remains to be seen if the high command will do the obvious- issue show cause notice on the MLAs, suspend them or move to disqualify them. Certainly this has placed the Congress high command in a lose-lose situation.