WHOSE AAP IS IT BY THE WAY, MR KEJRIWAL?

By Vikas Khanna

The message is clear. AAP is Kejriwal and Kejriwal is AAP. It has become a one-man party surrounded by yes men of Kejriwal. Anyone who dares Kejriwal or questions his autocratic style will be shown the door. From now onwards, its Kejriwal way or the highway!

The way Messrs Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav, Anand Kumar and Ajit Jha were kicked out of the party well past midnight was on predictable lines. It was in the offing. The script was written long ago. In fact, Bhushan and company, too, were aware of it.  After having been booted out of the powerful Political Affairs Committee and the national executive of the party, this was something which was expected. In fact, Kejriwal had made his intentions very clear when the party’s national council met early this month. He had then thundered that he could not work with his colleagues-turned-rebels. The poison-dipped gutter language that he used against them in a leaked audio tape speaks volumes about the hatred that he has towards them.

Almost all the founding members of AAP, except Kejriwal, have either quit the party or have been axed clearing the way for the former bureaucrat to run the party according to his whims and fancies. With all the ideologues and eminent personalities from different fields leaving the parent party, what now remains in the party is a bunch of opportunist people who had joined the bandwagon to further their flagging careers. 

Is then AAP any different from any other regional party where satraps have complete stranglehold on the party? The rest being mere lackeys clinging on to the leader and his or her inner circle!

Today, Kejriwal stands exposed. The very ideals – clean, corruption-free and transparent politics – which were supposed to be the mainstay of AAP, have been sacrificed at the altar of his ego and his personal ambitions.

One wonders what makes Kejriwal feel that he is the only “mai-baap” of the party which was born out of a movement for a strong lokpal to end the “corruption raj”.  He hijacked the people’s movement of Anna Hazare and formed a political party piggyriding on the success of the anti-corruption agitation.

Mr. Kejriwal will do well to remember that AAP had many fathers. He alone did not father the AAP. In fact, he could not have done it alone. Hundreds of thousands of people joined the movement to give birth to a nascent party in the hope of giving a new direction to the country. Fed up of the massive corruption scams and little or lopsided development, the country’s youth joined the new party in droves. They had hopes, they had aspirations, they saw in the party a platform which could give wings to their dreams. 

But alas! That did not happen.

None had anticipated that the party, which rose to power within two years of its formation, would start disintegrating within two months of tasting power in its second avatar. The party is fast losing its credibility. The internecine squabbles in the party have affected the governance.  That Delhi was littered with garbage by the striking employees of MCD last month raising fears of diseases because Kejriwal and his loyalists were busy dousing fires in the party has not gone down well with the masses. Is AAP’s success story over? It is too early to predict. But if that happens, then only Kejriwal will have to take the blame.