Anti-incumbency and Mamata: How Didi's go-to weapon against the CPM is threatening to backfire

File photo of Mamata Banerjee. AFP[/caption]Anti-incumbency is therefore catching up on Mamata Banerjee. Her strategy of slamming the CPM led Left Front in order to show case her achievements that by her reckoning “can’t be matched in 400 years” has worked so far. Blaming the past has been Mamata Banerjee’s best tool for certifying herself. Winning elections has been the confirmation she needed to snarl at the opposition: “If you can fight, then fight. If you can develop, then do it. If you can accept the challenge then do it. But if you can’t, then shut up and let us carry ahead with development.”If, on Day One of the confusing six phase-seven days of voting, the Trinamool Congress had allowed the Election Commission to conduct truly free and fair elections in a state better known for its capabilities in rigging and violence than in tamely following the rules of voting, Mamata Banerjee would have been more convincing as an achiever. The one incident of violence by the Trinamool Congress in West Midnapore district, on the CPM candidate for the Salboni constituency, Shyam Pande in which the media suffered collateral damage effectively invalidates the chief minister’s claims of extraordinary governance.  It also defines the challenge for the Election Commission. The Election Commission’s unprecedented arrangements are a confirmation that the Trinamool Congress is an almost uncontrollable force and extraordinary measures are needed to achieve a semblance of free and fair elections. It can choose to spend enormous amounts of public money to conduct a flawed election or it can find a method of securing to every voter in West Bengal the right to vote freely. If on Day One there were 537 complaints to the Election Commission about West Bengal police men who entered polling booths, polling agents who helped voters press the EVM buttons, windows through which the public could peek in while voting was in progress, violation of the 100 meters barrier around polling booths, there is every reason to speculate what will happen over the next six days of voting. The reckless disregard for the rules by which the Trinamool Congress has distinguished itself during all previous elections, from local municipal and panchayat elections to the Lok Sabha vote in 2014 reveals a contradiction. On the one hand, the ruling party believes that it enjoys almost divine impunity to use violence, physical and verbal, to achieve total domination of the political turf. Hence it has used threats and assaults, to win in every election after 2011. On the other hand, the use of violence implies the Trinamool Congress is uncertain about the levels of support it has among voters. With six more days of voting left, the Trinamool Congress will have the chance to either change its strategy or it can remain fixed in its routines of using every means, both fair and unfair, to achieve its ends. Either way, the Trinamool Congress will have to confront its own anti-incumbency ghost.