Highlighting stand to Delhi : Cultivating friends at right places
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: December 20 2017 -

Many daily newspapers based in Imphal opted to carry the Assembly election results of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh as the lead news on December 19, save for The Sangai Express which instead opted to run a lead story on the tour to New Delhi by leaders of different civil society organisations to lay down the position of the State to the different political leaders on the ongoing political dialogue between the NSCN (IM) and the Government of India.

The importance of cultivating friends in Delhi has always been stressed in this column and it is good to see that leaders of AMUCO, CCSK and UCM have deemed it right to lay down the position of the State to the Central leaders in clear cut terms and this is definitely the need of the hour.

Tough to say how the campaign at Delhi will affect the final settlement that may be inked anytime in the near future, but at least leaders of the said CSOs have laid down the position to the people who matter and this can go some way in highlighting the Manipur that the world should know.

Will not be surprising if CSOs from the other side of the Lim divide have already canvassed at Delhi or will in the coming days.

The sense of urgency in reaching out to different political parties can be understood in the backdrop of the fact that the Government of Nagaland has already urged the Centre to work out the final pact before the Assembly election which will be held in the early part of next year.

On top of this, Lok Sabha MP from Nagaland Nephiu Rio had gone public and urged for the final pact as a Christmas gift for the people.

This despite the fact that Interlocutor to the peace talk RN Ravi had stated that it is difficult to fix a time frame to ink the final settlement.

It is much more than when, but what the final settlement would be.

The apprehension of the people of Manipur over the Framework Agreement is understandable for this is a classified document, with only the Prime Minister, Th Muivah and RN Ravi seeming to be in the know of the contents and no one else.

It is this which the State Congress here has been highlighting for all to hear and take cognizance of, in the series of meetings it has held to demand the details of the Framework Agreement.

Not that the BJP led Government at the Centre will bend and spell out the details of the agreement it inked with the NSCN (IM) on August 3, 2015, and the State unit of the Congress too must know this.

However this does not mean that it should give up the series of meetings it has held so far, for apart from demanding the details of the Framework Agreement, it is also letting all know where the people stand.

What the Congress has so far said at the series of meetings cannot and should not be seen only through the prism of Congress the political party but through the larger spectrum of Manipur as a geo-political reality.

So taking the campaign to Delhi and spelling out the stand of the people via the series of meetings and it is here that one should see the campaign of the Congress beyond political affiliation.

At the same time, let it also be very clear to all that it is not any political party which spearheaded the movement to protect the interest of the State but the people, led by different civil society organisations.