BJP activists denting Modi’s image

For the first time since he swept to power in a landslide in 2014, some commentators are beginning to openly debate whether Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi can win a second term.

While Modi himself remains popular, it is the antics of some members of his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its more fanatical grassroots activists that are beginning to turn off many educated, cosmopolitan Indians.

This was reflected in some recent parliamentary by-election results in which the Indian National Congress and other Opposition parties took seats off the BJP, hailed by Congress as a “shift in the people’s mood” ahead of the General Election next year.

While Opposition celebrations would be premature, cracks are appearing in the BJP’s edifice of invincibility — something that is certain to be exploited in the months ahead.

Some BJP supporters are doing their party no favours with incidents such as threats made against journalists in the volatile border region of Jammu and Kashmir after reports on a former BJP Minister’s support of the accused in the rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl.

More recently, Minister for External Affairs, Sushma Swaraj came under a virulent storm of Twitter abuse after she ordered the transfer of a passport officer for allegedly harassing a Hindu woman and her Muslim husband.

The officer is denying the allegations against him, which include telling the husband to convert to Hinduism.

However, it is the beliefs of Uttar Pradesh’s Deputy Chief Minister that made headlines around the country, leaving many Indians, including members of the BJP, squirming with embarrassment.

In a live television appearance, Dinesh Sharma referred to episodes in the epics of ancient India, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, saying he believed that as Sita, the wife of the Hindu god Ram, was born in an earthen pot, she was actually the world’s first test tube baby.

Sharma is not alone in these strange views. The Chief Minister of the remote north-eastern State of Tripura, Biplab Deb claimed the internet and satellite technology existed at the time of the Mahabharata, responding to social media ridicule by saying his critics "lacked nationalism".

Deb is also on record as saying only civil engineers should join the Civil Service; that the 1997 Miss World, Diana Hayden “was not Indian enough” and that the youth of Tripura should “open shops and milk cows” rather than looking for Government jobs. 

Modi has repeatedly said that a second term is needed to firmly establish his nation on the road to becoming a 21^st century superpower. To be sure of this he needs to reign in some of the BJP’s loose cannons with their thinking still firmly rooted in the India of myth and magic. 

Is democracy heading into the night?

Winston Churchill is reported to have said that the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

If that was indeed the old statesman’s view, it was probably formed by incidents similar to the Australian Liberal Party’s recent annual conference.

As Ministers from the ruling party looked on in horror, grassroots delegates merrily passed a resolution from the youth wing favouring privatisation of the country’s public broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Also endorsed by the conference was a call to follow United States President Donald Trump in moving the country’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Ministers rushed to assure Australians that conference resolutions are only “advisory” and that the Government has no intention of acting on either.

This is true, but so is the fact that the young bucks behind the motions do have the power back in their branches to choose candidates to represent their views at future General Elections.

In what may well be a taste of what is to come, a moderate party vice president was voted out and replaced by a conservative.

What was even more disturbing was the way experienced conference delegates who should have known better surrendered to the artless youngsters in the debate over privatisation of the ABC with not a single dissenting voice from the floor.

Commentators said it was a clear indication that the party was moving further to the right, abandoning the middle ground it had been so careful to cultivate over decades.

Or is this simply that more rational minds are deserting politics, disgusted with the freeloading, hype and self-interest that infects public life today?

This may be the reaction to what is generally seen as a wave of populism sweeping the Western democracies, highlighted by the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union, Donald Trump’s America and the growth of anti-migration sentiment in Europe.

One can imagine Young Liberals in their Make Australia Great Again baseball caps, gleefully plotting their disruptions in the full knowledge their resolutions will hijack the conference and make them instant media stars.  

Populism has achieved so much in the few years since it made its appearance – savage divisions, people at each other’s throats, escalating trade wars, soaring inequality, children in cages — so why not try some of it in stable, multicultural Australia?  

Churchill lived in a world when the electorate decided who would govern every three to five years, with the professionals getting on with the job in between.

He is also on record as saying that democracy is a poor form of government, even if others are far worse.

Maybe he realised from bitter experience how easily democracy could be subverted by ruthless leaders with a message the people wanted to hear; that the line between it and mob rule was paper thin.

He would have recoiled at the resort to the referenda, tweets, focus groups, opinion polls, endless electioneering, stunts, political point scoring, posturing and grandstanding that passes for democracy today.

Mass communication is the platform from which demagogues can present their simplistic answers to the world’s most complicated questions and get away with it. The genie is escaping from the bottle and the question is whether the stopper can ever be replaced.   

Boris plays his Brexit Trump card

United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has been at it again — blaming the Civil Service for his Government’s woeful handling of the negotiations to exit the European Union (Brexit).

This time his target was the Treasury, which he described as the “heart of Remain”.

In comments which were apparently off the record but nevertheless recorded, Johnson said the Treasury did not want the initial friction and disruption caused by the UK’s exit  

“They are sacrificing all the medium and long-term gains [from Brexit] amid fear of short-term disruption,” Johnson is reported to have said.

“That fear of short-term disruption has become so huge in people’s minds that they’re turning wet. Project Fear is really working on them. They’re terrified of this nonsense. It’s all mumbo jumbo.”

Johnson’s reference to Project Fear, a term used during the 2016 referendum to deride any claims of negative effects of a British EU withdrawal, clearly indicated he is aware that the tide of public opinion is turning against Brexit.

However, it is what he said next that startled his audience.

Johnson said he had an increasing admiration for United States President Donald Trump.

“Imagine Trump doing Brexit. He’d go in bloody hard. There’d be all sorts of breakdowns. All sorts of chaos. Everyone would think he’d gone mad, but actually you might get somewhere. It’s a very, very good thought.”

Johnson was presumably referring to Trump’s executive orders making it easier to sack Public Servants he disagreed with, the legality of which is being challenged by public sector unions in a dispute that could reach the Supreme Court.    

It led to a sardonic question in Parliament when Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn asked if Prime Minister Theresa May was going to ask Trump to take over the Brexit negotiations.

May’s answer was drowned out by cheering and laughter as Johnson sat beside her, grinning sheepishly. 

The best that can be said of this unedifying incident is that Johnson, no stranger to alcoholic refreshment, was speaking at a dinner given by the Institute of Directors, following a drinks reception hosted by the Conservative Way Forward think tank. 

From the time during the referendum campaign when he claimed withdrawal from the EU would allow an extra £350 million ($A622 million) to be spent on the National Health Service, Johnson has proved he has a fertile imagination.

His blunderings into areas outside the purview of the Foreign Office, such as his support for a bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland, have proved a constant irritation to his colleagues.

However, most commentators believe that Johnson, who led the Brexit referendum campaign, is unsackable, and May is stuck with him to the bitter end.

A friend of Johnson’s claimed the dinner meeting was held “under Chatham House rules” and it was “disappointing” his comments had been publicised.

Better advice would be for the Foreign Secretary to think twice before sounding off rather than relying on conventions that are simply irrelevant in an age where anyone with a smartphone is an instant publicist and broadcaster.

The day the dream died

I cried when Robert Kennedy was murdered.

I’ve only done that for one other politician, Sir Winston Churchill, but for very different reasons.

I mourned Churchill for his visions – for winning the unwinnable war in 1940, and then six years later, for a ‘United States of Europe’ as the best and perhaps the only way of guaranteeing the continent would not plunge back into the cycles of conflict that had plagued it for millennia.

Churchill died an old man in 1964 after a career that stretched back into the previous century. He had made mistakes, many of them, and there were people who cursed him for it, but his ability to see a way forward, to understand what the future required of the present, set him apart.

Against him, the current crop of leaders we are burdened with are, to misquote the Bard, a collection of petty men and women who peep about to find themselves dishonourable graves.

Kennedy was different, denied the chance to put his mark on history by an assassins’ bullet, he is frozen in time. He is forever a young-looking 42 with the boyish smile and the fashionably long hair of the day flopping over his forehead as he worked the crowds.

At the moment of his death, 50 years ago today, the United States Senator from New York had just won two American Presidential Primary Elections, including the crucial one in California.

He was on his way to the Democratic Convention in Chicago where he would still have to fight for the nomination, but momentum was with him and, from the vantage point of hindsight, most commentators believe he would have won there and gone on to defeat Republican Richard Nixon in November.

All that belongs to the vast collection of ‘what ifs’ peppering history, and we can never know how he would have handled the turbulent years that awaited in the 1970s, but there are indications he would have managed with greater success than those who were eventually handed the task.

He was an efficient organiser, managing his older brother’s successful presidential campaign in 1960; as the nation’s Attorney General, a job he never wanted, but was told by his father, Joe, that he had to take it because the president needed his good counsel, he was a hard-working crusader against organised crime.

His ability to handle crisis manifested itself as the world came close to nuclear war over Russian missiles stationed on Cuba, less than 170 kilometres from the US mainland. It was Kennedy who was sent out by his brother to negotiate a secret deal with the Russians that pulled both countries back from the brink of conflict.     

Above all, he had the ability, almost unrecognisable today, of a leader who was prepared to acknowledge his mistakes, learn from them and adapt.  From a ‘reds under the bed’ hunter of communists on the staff of Senator Joe McCarthy in the early 1950s, he became a champion of the poor and underprivileged in the next decade.

The rich kid from an entitled family could drop in on the homes of poor blacks and – this set him apart from other politicians who try the same thing during election campaigns – not seem uncomfortable and out of place.

Even so, he was shocked at what he found. He famously said to an aide: “I’ve been in third and fourth world countries and I’ve not seen anything as terrible as this.”

When he promised to do something for them, these forgotten people believed him.

As the train carrying his body made its slow, painful progress towards his final resting place in Arlington Cemetery they lined the tracks, many carrying his picture taken from the walls of their shacks.

In his eulogy, Ted, the youngest and last survivor of the Kennedy brothers, quoted the theme of Bobby’s campaign – a phase he used at the end of almost all his speeches.

"Some men see things as they are and say: Why? I dream things that never were and say: Why not?"

Rest in peace Bobby.