With the dust settling in AP it turns out that YSRCP, the fledgling party floated by the son of Dr. YSR, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy lost the elections in AP to TDP with a vote percentage of two points. While in a winner take all democracy, Naidu gets to be Chief Minister, the margin hardly gives him or his followers preening rights.
Naidu cannot ignore the razor thin margins of his victories. If an MP from Nandyal, SPY Reddy decides to ditch YSRCP to join TDP at this stage, the initial reaction is to think, ‘good riddance to bad rubbish’.. Although one has every right to feel outrage at this shoddy display of loyalty and ‘fair weather friend attitude’ that prevails among those that are not supported by a strong moral core, one is tempted to dig deeper to understand the rationale, if there is one. If SPY Reddy’s reasoning that ‘with BJP in power at the Center, he’d like to join TDP’ what stopped him from joining the BJP itself? Was this another of TDP’s cheap tricks of manipulation? Of course they need to start shoring up their votes as they will likely default on several of their wild election promises which may have swung the election their way.
The citizens of the state are watching and the electorate of Nandyal must be thinking, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Please remember that Mr. SPY Reddy.
The reason YSRCP didn’t cross that two percentage point difference was because they stuck to their principles with gumption and resolve. Perhaps the thought did cross Jagan’s mind that there may be a chance of losing. However it is quite likely it didn’t matter to him to win imperfectly as Naidu did, as to fight perfectly despite the chance of losing, as he did.
realclearfocus 
2 replies on “The two percent”
People are supreme in democracy. No two ways about it. They elect those who satisfy them. Some want immediate needs satisfied and some long term. Some want development and some welfare schemes. And, some want money, liquor, etc. I love YSR for recognizing this essential theory. He always said both sustained development and social welfare were important. He was genuine, believed to the core and delivered them. That’s why people love him, even after his death. Chandrababu wanted power at any cost and promised heaven and earth and got elected. The yellow mafia also did an extensive false propaganda on Jagan, which worked to certain extent. But, I believe Jagan should have countered all this by coming open and explaining himself, which he never did. We could have won by avoiding just a couple of blunders we made. Lack of experience, and getting outspent were the main reasons. Also, campaigning and electioneering are two different things I think. We lacked the organization to oversee all the constituencies simultaneously! And most of our candidates, who worked hard were successful, and a few of several candidates, who depended mostly on Jagan lost. This is what gives me the hope for a brighter future. They did everything right and we did most of the important things wrong, but we were very close to victory. We will win if we can correct ourselves.
Party, Sakshi, and some of our supporters are talking about less than 2% vote difference between us and TDP. All this may be for moral boosting of our cadre. But, the same behavior of our leadership was responsible for our poll debacle. We need to honestly analyze what went wrong, the reasons for our loss from a position of complete sweep. We need to do a deep introspection and a real postmortem. We must be honest, else we will fail again! Beware!!
Note: We can look at Ponguleti Seenanna and his inspiring campaign to learn lessons. He worked hard to build a solid base for YSRCP in Khammam.