Well, there are many issues, many
routine events and many developments - within a span of just six months - to
write against the Aam Aadmi Pary and Arvind Kejriwal - that it, more than
anything else, tells how fast has been the erosion of any value system - if the
AAP had one.
It has been a rapid downward
journey for the AAP since the historic high of February 2015 when it won a
historical mandate cornering 67 of 70 seats in the Delhi assembly polls,
improving miraculously on another miracle that it had thrown by emerging as the
second largest party in 2013 assembly polls - just a year after its political
foray.
Due to the turn of events, the
AAP ended forming the government in Delhi. Then, the electorate had seen
Congress's support as the basic minimum to form the government and the AAP had
tried to show that in spite of Congress's support, the party was independently
following its policies. The party had some tough questions to follow when it
resigned in the name of 'Jan Lokpal Bill' because many saw it as an effort to
try luck for greener pastures, i.e., prime-ministerial chair and the Lok Sabha
elections.
Anyway, the party survived that.
It miraculous electoral feat in February 2015 showed that. It also pushed the
AAP to claim the legacy of the '49 days' that it was in the Delhi government
during its first tenure.
But the aspirations, the hopes
started taking a hit here - aspirations and hopes that gave the party such a rare,
resounding mandate.
Arvind Kejriwal first got
Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan kicked out of the party they had
co-founded. Then he executed moves that told us that the AAP was fast becoming
a party synonymous with Arvind Kejriwal and it had no political future without
him.
And the process looks complete
now.
No one in the AAP talks about the
'Jan Lokpal Bill' now.
Instead, Arvind Kejriwal and his
ministers prefer to follow a politics of confrontation with the Narendra Modi
led Union Government that has a direct political interest in Delhi and will try
to exercise its power in whatever way possible through its representative, the Lieutenant-Governor.
Delhi is the national capital of
India and therefore the Union Government needs to have deep stakes here. That
makes Delhi a half-state for its elected government and like every government
in Delhi, Kejriwal had to find a way out of it.
Instead, he chose to take on the
Union Government asking for full statehood.
On August 14, his government will
complete six months in office but he has nothing but empty rhetoric, spate of
controversies and wasteful expenditure of public money in promoting a 'Kejriwal
cult'.
And what's more, a fatigue is
creeping in, to write even a critical piece on the AAP. The party that made
'common man' a leitmotif of its political rise needs to think how would it
answer people who are increasing viewing it as just yet another political party
with nothing new to offer. The AAP had promised change but the voter is finding
the hard truth that the party has changed, and for worse. The AAP may or may
not realize it but 'uncommonness' has become the new leitmotif of the party.
Voters are scrutinizing these
developments. People are watching closely Mr. Kerjriwal!