Aam Admi Party a Catastrophe of Right Wing Reformism

(This article was first published in May 2015 in the previous version of People’s Review. Due to an incident of hacking the old website was pulled down and we could only restore the old articles in this section)

Long back Karl Marx said “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” The first tragedy of the right-wing forces always leave them astray and the farce turns them into comedians. The same happened with Arvind Kejriwal led Aam Admi Party, or the common men’s party, which won the elections of Delhi twice in a year and yet could not conceal its own political bankruptcy that resulted due to their hollow principles, forged and copied from different parts by different people, just like once some people drafted a constitution for India without realising its ground realities.

When AAP won the elections during the 2013 polls of Delhi, it came to power with external support from that very Congress Party, which they have attacked during the elections as their chief folly and suddenly, with a 180 degree turn, the AAP did not hesitated to form a government with their support. This was done by the AAP to make a point in its secular credibility, though more than half of their leaders are from upper caste Hindus, as the Congress blamed that AAP is working hand in glove with RSS. Despite their efforts and stints the government could not survive for any longer than 49 days as the approaching general elections of 2014 compelled Kejriwal to show his stunts to the people as an activist Chief Minister, on the other hand the growing discontent and struggles of the transport and other workers, especially the contract workers, of Delhi forced the government to retreat from taking any decision. Finally the paralysed government collapsed and the Lieutenant Governor Nazir Jung got the throne of Delhi due to the absence of any consensus between the warring factions of the right-wing over the throne of the semi-state national capital.

When Kejriwal returned to office in 2015, he won more seats than any other party and swept the BJP and the Congress away from Delhi. The success gave an adrenaline rush to Kejriwal & associates that they even swept their own party and purged all those dissented with his views. The infighting of the AAP showed clearly to the world that the showcasing of moral principles, ideologies, etc. by Kejriwal & associates were sham, as much fake as Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s tears for the peasants killed due to the harsh economic conditions imposed by the prevailing feudal production relations in the countryside. The washing of the lingerie in public by the AAP, took away their competitive leverage against the BJP and the Congress, on the other hand, the police atrocities on the workers and youth of Delhi turned down the ratings of the AAP government.

In recent times, Kejriwal once again resorted to his stunts to amuse the people of Delhi, hoodwink the poor by challenging the establishment and pressing all his strength to meet his own adventurous goals of winning cheap popularity. The cult of individual, as praised and worshipped by right wing parties and the support it draws from the middle classes in a semi feudalistic economy, often cloaks the political agenda beneath the shiny muslin of individual charisma. With Lieutenant Governor Nazir Jung not ready to leave any part of the executive power enjoyed by his office, Kejriwal is reluctant to share a bit of power with anyone else. This stand-off between the LG, who is backed by the Modi regime, and Mr Kejriwal, brought again a series of stints, high voltage drama in Delhi’s political arena and turned into a hot  topic for the elite Delhites, who started showing their growing allegiance to the Modi regime since the election results were out.

The unanswered questions of the poor people of Delhi is printed below, which no one from the ruling or opposition quarters dare to answer: What benefits the workers will receive from  Mr Kejriwal’s government and its policies? How the working class can even meet its ends everyday in a city like Delhi with rising cost of food products and essential items, with skyrocketing rent and transport cost? What plans does AAP government has to protect their rights, the rights of slum children, the right to livelihood, and the right to live?

The Kejriwal government will shift the blame to someone else, and will quote the constitution to prove that the Delhi government, due to the absence of full statehood, has nothing much to do to help the poor and the toiling masses. Then if the people question Kejriwal and his party the reason they fought an election and promised good governance when the only thing they can do is carry on aimless agitations for full statehood and put the issues concerning the people to the back-burner? The answer will be simple, to enjoy the fruits of power, to pursue their right wing endeavour to further the cause of the foreign and domestic corporations, whose interest they represent, and to keep the people diverted from any political struggle aimed at socio-economic transformations.

It is high time that the progressive forces should come out openly in support of the masses of workers, students, and common people waging their struggle against the anti people policies of the AAP government led by Kejriwal & Co. The myth of AAP’s clean politics that surrounds the clan of Kejriwal and tries to immune it from public scrutiny, must be shattered by democratic forces.

Unless the common people are educated and organised against these pseudo democrats, who are working as the safety valve of foreign monopoly capital owned corporations, it will not take much time for the Delhi government to unleash fascist rule on the people following the footsteps of Sheila Dixit.