Politics of the Apes.

Politicians are increasingly behaving like apes, sitting on either side of the aisle making faces at each other. In the US Republicans refused to pass any bill proposed by President Obama including raising the debt ceiling and the jobs bill. Their calculation was to block any improvement in the economy and then blame the suffering of the people on Obama, hoping to gain electoral advantage. As cynical a betrayal of their duty to voters as we are likely to see. In Britain a Conservative led cabinet of " posh boys " under Prime Minister, David Cameron is stubbornly pursuing an austerity budget by cutting benefits to the needy, privatising the NHS and raising taxes resulting in a contraction of the economy. Seems that they are following the mantra of TINA ( There Is No Alternative ) which was the teaching of Margaret Thatcher, a cult figure in the Tory Party. In India the Parliament is a cacophony of some 38 parties, most of which we never knew existed and have one or 2 seats out of total of 242. The Indian National Congress is the largest party with 206 seats followed by the BJP with 114 seats. After elections in 2009 the Congress formed an alliance of 10 parties of which Trinamul Congress has 19, DMK 18, NCP 9 RLD 5 and the J & K National Conference has 3. The Congress had a comfortable majority with other smaller parties. Now Trinamul says it will walk out of the government because Mamata Bannerjee is against the latest rise in the price of diesel and allowing foreign retailers to open stores in India. While Bannerjee is known to be flighty, and could do with some therapy, she is not known to be personally corrupt, which cannot be said of the leaders of other parties. She has done nothing for Bengal since her election last year and maybe calculating that early general elections will be to her advantage before support for her party erodes altogether. Or this maybe her last throw of the dice to force Congress to forgive debts of up to Rs 300 billion. She has threatened to withdraw support previously only to reverse her decision, to be ridiculed by Congress MPs. After the fiasco of the election of President, Congress MP, Adhir Choudhury said," Now Didi is crying after her loss of face as also after losing the political battle. And the Left Front is laughing." Now the Congress has to depend on the support of SP led by Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav, which has 23 seats, or BSP led by Ms Mayawati which has 21 seats. Of these two, Ms Mayawati would be reluctant to have an early general election because of her party's recent thrashing in UP assembly polls. However, we, the citizens are not privy to the machinations going on behind closed doors. We know that some parties have made hundreds of billions of rupees from all the scams which have been discovered so there could well be sharing of the booty. What is certain is that anything the politicians do will be in their self interest and not in the interest of the people. Humans ruled by apes. Sad.