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Front Page >> Editorials > Story

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Short Lived Honeymoon
The walk out of the MSCP from the fold of the Secular Progressive Front was a thing just waiting to happen and in fact to many of the keen political observers, the decision of the MSCP to snap ties with the SPF must have come later than expected. We agree that it would be unwise to hazard a guess on the political development likely to accrue following the exit of the MSCP from the Front but one thing we can say for sure is that not everything is well within the SPF and Chief Minister O Ibobi may have rubbed some of the constituent partners the wrong way. 

As we see it, the seeds of discord within the Front were sowed when the Congress engineered the defection of five of the seven elected MSCP MLAs and merged them with the party. Not only this but three MLAs each from the Samata Party and the NCP were lured away and merged with the Congress. The break up of the MSCP followed the hectic lobbying launched by Th Chaoba to merge the MSCP with the Congress amidst strong opposition from some of the Congressmen. That the anti-Chaoba group prevailed in the end could be gauged from the fact that the enmasse merger of the MSCP never materialized and instead we saw the decimation of the party. 

The death knell of the MSCP was sounded when the party leadership took the hard decision to suspend two of its remaining MLAs, Education Minister Y Erabot and Social Welfare Minister Vivek Raj Wangkhem from the primary membership of the party on grounds of anti-party activities. The exit of the MSCP may not have much impact on the floor of the House as the SPF is comfortably perched in the number tally. Moreover the utility of MSCP appear to have exhausted as it now no longer has any MLA in the Assembly.

The MSCP has walked out but there are still many questions that are yet to be answered effectively. Why did it take so long for Mr Th Chaoba to call it quits? Why quit the ruling coalition Front now when it has no MLAs at all? Why didn't Th Chaoba and the leadership of the MSCP walk out of the coalition when five of its seven MLAs were lured away by the Congress which clearly violated the MoU signed between the Front partners when the SPF was floated after the 8th Assembly election? Why didn't Chaoba snap ties when the enmasse merger proposal of the MSCP with the Congress was aborted? 

For a man who has seen it all and who is no small political figure, why did Chaoba continue to tolerate the slight that he and his party suffered at the hands of the Congress for so long? And most importantly what are the other political exigencies at play that compelled Chaoba to walk out of the SPF? These are questions that can be best answered by the MSCP president himself but nevertheless we raise these points because these have the potential to decide the course of the political developments in the near future. We also wonder in which direction the MSCP will proceed now. 

The party did reasonably well in the 8th Assembly election to return seven MLAs but today it is reduced to a party without a single MLA in the House. One reason why the MSCP has seen such a roller coaster ride ever since it came into being in 1997 to oust Rishang Keishing is because the only common denominator binding the members of the party was the spoils of power. And yes of course, even though the MSCP held the reins of power for some years it failed to etch out a distinct identity of its own. Somewhere, somehow, the troika of Chaoba, Nipamacha and Dr Chandramani failed to address this important point.

(Courtesy: The Sangai Express)

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