Whose Waterloo is it?

Being the media's darling is a wonderful experience. But only till the going is good. Ask Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah and they would not disagree. How inconvenient and embarrassing it is today for the dejected father-and-son duo to listen to the replay of their own sound bytes made in the cosy days of the dynasty's day in the political sunshine when interacting with the media was a pleasure.

On countless occasions Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, who takes pride in being called the son of the 'Lion of Kashmir (Sher-e-Kashmir),' virtually roared at Mehbooba Mufti on the floor of the state assembly: 'It is my solemn pledge that I will never in my life allow you to enter this House again.' That threat could be heard everytime Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's fearless daughter attacked Farooq for acts of omission and commission. And there were many such occasions during Mehbooba's three-year tenure as a Congress MLA from 1996 to 1999.

She quit the seat prematurely after she and her father quit the Congress to float the People's Democratic Party which has done the National Conference in. Mehbooba chose not to contest the ensuing by-election from her Bijbehara constituency but put up a relatively non-entity on the PDP ticket who defeated Farooq's candidate Rafi Ahmed Mir. Interestingly, in the just-concluded assembly poll, the same Mir suffered a second defeat as Farooq's candidate in the Pahalgam constituency.

It is an irony that while Mehbooba is back in the assembly, with reinforced floor strength at her command, none of the three stars of the Abdullah dynasty will be there. Farooq did not contest the assembly election, hoping to leave the throne to his son. The son failed to retain the family's traditional Ganderbal seat, thus denying the third generation Abdullah the chance to continue the family legacy of ruling this state. Farooq's brother Mustafa Kamal suffered the worst defeat from Tangmarg constituency by a very large margin, again, at the hands of a candidate from Mehbooba's party.

It is the first time since 1975, when Sheikh Abdullah rejoined the national mainstream, that the state assembly will not have a member of Kashmir's 'first political family' on its benches. Mehbooba has good reason to have that last laugh. But temperamentally she is so different from the Abdullahs.

The interesting story of politics in Kashmir, which is notorious for being a graveyard of reputations, does not end there. Omar Abdullah said it so many times during the election campaign that 'Ganderbal is going to be Mufti's Waterloo.' The Mufti, like his daughter, did not reply in the same coin. He only worked hard to convert Ganderbal into a Waterloo, not only for Omar but the Abdullah dynasty itself. The family and the National Conference will need plenty of time to recover from the shock of this particular defeat.

Whose 'Waterloo' is it? Omar would not like to be reminded of his pre-poll prediction.

In fact, Omar's start as National Conference president on June 23 carried a jarring note about his temperament as a leader. The language he used on that significant occasion, and that too while addressing his followers and party workers, was distasteful, to say the least. Warning potential dissidents, the new National Conference president said 'Yaad rakho, agar hum tum ko nikaal denge to kuta bhi nahin poochnge (remember, if we kick you out even a dog won't ask for you).'

Today, after tasting defeat in his very first popularity test, Omar is blaming 'my own party workers' for not having done enough for his electoral success.

Perhaps, the most appropriate advice given to Omar by his father, after the recent debacle, was that 'Omar should learn from the life of his grandfather (Sheikh Abdullah),' who had so many ups and downs in his public life. Is it a belated realisation that there is nothing worth emulating in the two-decade long legacy ascribed to Farooq's leadership?

Mohammad Sayeed Malik

ALSO READ:
Jammu and Kashmir Elections 2002: The complete coverage