Dear AAP, Why So Thin-Skinned Now?

Caesar's wife does not just have to be above suspicion, she also has to be perceived to be so. Going by the rules set by the Aam Aadmi Party, she now also has to constantly prove that she is above suspicion.

 

From Kabir Foundation to IAC to AAP, Arvind Kejriwal has always used aggression as an answer to questions asked of him on either the way his organizations have raised funds or the gaping contradictions between his claims and reality.

 

A group of breakaway volunteers of AAP, the AVAM (AAP Volunteer Action Manch), have brought into the  public domain evidence of malpractices in the way funds are raised by the Aam Aadmi Party. They brought out screenshots of AAP website showing four companies  having donated 50 Lakhs each on the same date and same time (5 April, 2014) to AAP. 

 

AAP has always claimed that any donation higher than 10 Lakhs is scrutinized by its Political Affairs Committee (PAC). Was it done in these cases? If yes, why were these donations accepted which were clearly in violation of the law of the land?

 

Section 182 of the Companies Act allows companies which show a profit for last three financial years to make political donations to the tune of 7.5% of the said profits. In the case of these four companies, none of them has posted profits in their balance sheets. In fact they show dormancy in last two years.

 

As per the Foreign Contributions Regulations Act, no foreign company can donate to political parties. AAP has also reportedly been accepting funds from abroad which are routed through Indian entities.

 

Last month, there were stories in a section of the media that exposed multiple receipts bearing identical numbers issued by AAP in lieu of donations. Since the amounts in question were small and due to the hype created by the party about its honesty, the stories did not get the kind of traction they merited.

 

Political funding in India is a grey area. One of the major planks of Aam Aadmi Party was transparent funding of elections. People who had come to live with the existing gray funding practices, found in the party a fresh return to fundamental questions of honesty, transparency and an above-board conduct.

 

Today, when volunteers of AVAM furnished solid evidence of malpractices in funding of AAP and exposed its tall claims of mechanisms of transparency built in their functioning, AAP resorts to 'my shirt may be grey but yours is black' tactic. In a late night emergency press conference, the party demanded an SIT probe in funding of political parties. Predictably, it also demanded a probe in the funding of media houses and the funding of the political advertisements released to the media. AAP's defense is predictably aggressive as it lacks in content. They challenged BJP and Congress to lay bare their account books. Their leaders also accused its rival parties to be funding AVAM. Is that even a valid defense?

 

Apart from the technical aspects of the law of the land and the stated principles of the Aam Aadmi Party and their defense, this episode forces us to revisit the entire image building extravaganza of the party and more so of its convenor, Arvind Kejriwal.

 

The party managed to convince people that theirs was a movement - a movement funded and supported by the common people who wanted to invest in change. Thus, the-crowd sourced funds flowing into their coffers were a sign of the kind of support they and their brand of politics attracted. Even before people could express their support in the form of votes, they did so in the form of notes. The benchmark of measuring popularity through donations was set by Arvind Kejriwal himself and the party kept releasing news of its funds to reinforce the perception of popularity. The party now finds itself imprisoned by its own parameters. If there is a dip in funds, it also gets reported in the media.

 

The transparency of the desperation of AAP leadership can be seen in the fact that they are now forced to show large denominations of donations, even if they are from dubious sources, to be able to keep up the semblance of popularity.

 

The other two national parties depend on multiple sources of funding including corporate funding too. Almost all their sources are generically known. These are also parties which have built-in checks and balances. Shell companies giving crores of rupees to a party led by a man who claims to be an anarchist gives rise to more serious questions. Who are these unknown entities who cannot come out in the open and contribute to the Aam Aadmi Party? What is their interest in investing in the party? What would be the payback to them if the party were to form the government?

 

Aren't the known devils that fund other political parties better than these unknown angels funding Aam Aadmi Party, even though they are allegedly not making any profits through their stated businesses, which some say are listed with fictitious addresses?  

 

The party had made a fine art out of leveling charges against rival political parties, corporate and media houses. Most of these charges were not substantiated by documentary evidence and the onus to prove innocence was hurled at the doorstep of those accused. Many a reputation was thus sullied and the party got away with it.

 

The aggression with which the Aam Aadmi Party attacked people and institutions was hitherto unknown in our political narrative. It is this aggression which also helps Arvind in building an image of an angry young man voicing the angst of the poor and the middle classes. He cleverly identifies his political rivals to make visible enemies out of them to pander to the anger of this constituency of the angry.

 

It is of vital importance to know who are the masters behind this aggressive ambition to 'change the system', undermine institutions and 'serve the poor'.