India's Congress party yesterday attempted an act of political alchemy, seeking partners for a coalition that could deny power to the general election victors - the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The BJP and 11 allied parties took 245 seats in India's parliament, according to results in all but two seats yesterday. The Congress's Mrs Sonia Gandhi logged 56,000 kms on the campaign trail to help her family's party and its allies to 166 seats, while the ruling United Front of regional and left-wing parties was reduced to a relatively pitiful 95 seats.
BJP leaders yesterday spoke as if victory was already theirs. However, with their BJP coalition falling just 27 seats short of an outright majority, the Congress was unwilling to recognise defeat. 'The BJP and its allies have been mightily rejected by the voters,' Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad, the party's general secretary, said. 'In my opinion, the Congress party and the United Front will build the new government.'
The United Front also appeared game for the attempt. Setting aside ideology and historic resentments in the space of a few hours, the two largest forces in the alliance, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the champion of the lower castes, the Samajwadi Party, pledged unqualified support for a Congress-led government. It will fall to India's president, Mr KR Narayanan, to make the hard choices before March 15th, when the lower house of parliament (Lok Sabha) reconvenes. Though its parameters are still unknown one thing is certain: India's next government will emerge only after feverish and under-handed machinations and is unlikely to last a full five years.
It is also unlikely to fulfil any of its manifesto promises for fear of alienating parties in coalitions that will stretch to a dozen members, betraying the trust of some 330 million who voted in these elections. Bombay's stock markets reacted with dismay to the prospect of further instability.
In the political free-for-all that was unleashed yesterday, some 20 independent and minor party MPs could emerge as king-makers. And the BJP was discovering yesterday that it may not be able to count even on its election partners.
Ms J. Jayalalitha, the empress of Tamil Nadu, who confounded opinion polls to bounce back from zero to a commanding position, yesterday held talks with the BJP's would-be prime minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, as well as
Congress officials. She reportedly has set a high price on her loyalty. The BJP alliance may find it hard too to hang on to another fiery woman leader, Ms Mamata Bannerjee of West Bengal, who flounced out of the Congress last December and set up her own regional party.