UP Assembly elections critical for the Sonia Gandhi survival
So, the Election Commission’s petition to the President goes unresolved on date!
So, the Prime Minister won’t interfere!
In the Law Minister-Election Commission confrontation?
So, Sonia Gandhi calls the shots?
See, who are all the decisive spokespersons?
All from the same source: 10, Janpath! We don’t want to say much more than this simple observation.
Now, the most latest5 and the most blatant intervention is from none other than the daughter of Sonia Gandhi, the President of the Congress party, it is no more called by anyone as the Indian National Congress! The very name sounds hallow, considering how the grand old party, the 127 year old legacy has been so thoroughly squandered by one and all.
It is a great tragedy that at the end of the day, say the next elections or even before it, the legacy of destroying the party’s ethos and culture, a very diverse and yet a very unifying history, the INC, had seen hundreds, if not thousands and lakhs of people of the country who came to sacrifice their all for the one great vision, a free Indian.
Such a legacy has been squandered today.
Now, Sonia Gandhi who sticks to the job as if it her family heirloom, yes it is today, unfortunately, and her son, a reluctant son, we have to concede has been thrust into taking over the crown, he is now joined by his younger sister, Priyanka Gandhi and the most comical of all is her being joined now by her businessman husband Robert Vadera!
Yes, the situation is becoming both a tragicomedy and a travesty of everything we hold as good and great.
Now, the very Indian ethos is conservative and also patriarchical, let us admit.
In such a society comes a family whose names, foreign sounding, Christian and also much less respectable and there is every potential for a revulsion and an internal revolution!
The party can’t hold the centre of gravity.
In fact, we are tempted to quote W.B.Yeats: There is anarchy everywhere!
The Prime Minister’s studied silence (or helplessness?) has hit several grave issues. The very Constitutional values and institutions, even when the Commonwealth body is debating the issues in India’ neighbourhood in the Maldives (where the former President Nasheed had warned of India as the Chinese would find a foothold) there is total insensitivity in New Delhi.
It looks as if in New Delhi nothing matters, India’s eroding international standing in such a grave time like at present in Maldives developments and also, when the Prime Minister doesn’t act in any visible manner.
Now, it is a family fiefdom, the Central government’s inaction and all attention to what the family does. As per for the graver issues inside and outside, in our own neighbourhood, the latest developments in Maldives, the PM wont bestir himself into some emblem of action! As for the Election Commission, EC seemed to have come to terms with the political reality and there is a stalemate and let us see how the EC-Law Minister spat ends.
Salman Kurshid hasnt back down and he is carrying on with his electioneering. The Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh, sadly, seems to be in his last days. In the last legs of his government.
Yes, this state of affairs can’t go on and on forever, it seems! That is the assumption the citizens have to make as they see things going on in New Delhi.
The Election Commission, the three member’s Constitutional body meets and decides to write to the President of India a letter for “decisive and immediate action”. The letter was handed over around 5.30 in the evening and ‘immediately’ and in a sense ‘decisively’ the President forwards the letter to the Prime Minister for “appropriate action”. Then, what happens?
No action from the Prime Minister. He, as usual and as we have been seeing for far too long with so much disastrous consequences to the polity and to the very imagination of the entire nation, no actions were taken on so many number of such critical issues like 2-G scams to other scandals. The list unfortunately is now getting longer and longer as days pass by, the Supreme Court in one week delivered such devastating judgments, on Dr.Subramaniyan Swamy’s petition to prosecute P.Chidambaram, the Home Minister and then the 122 telecom licenses were cancelled in one go, as it were, after so many years of “non-action” by our learned and honest and God-fearing chief executive.
The Cabinet Minister and MPs and high profile corporates went to jail or to say very differently, they cooled their heels thanks to the bounty and generosity of the Prime Minister’s benign kindness and concern for the citizens concerned. High profile the suspects were no doubt. The chief ally, the DMK suffered the most, the allegations were not run of the mill scandals, and two hundred crores were alleged to have paid in bribes for the DMK TV channel, the DMK chief’s own daughter, a Rajya Sabha MP, had to spend time for some 6 months.
The DMK Cabinet Minister, who played such reckless role in ruining the very telecom department, was sent to jail and he continues to languish in Tihar jail for years along with some of his hapless officials. What sins they committed except to collide with the minister who at that point of time seemed to have lives such an exalted power and status, not in the DMK pantheon but in the very country and the very top contacts with the very high corporate lord, the Tatas and their unassailable powers, with their high profile PRO, the most powerful and the most unassailable Nira Radia whose boss Ratan Tata himself came very close to the precipice! The very Tata went out of his way to do things that normally would have invited so much ire of the country for the ruin it invited to the great name of Tata. Oh, dear JRD, (JRD Tata, the Bharat Ratna) what great damage your heir had brought for your such admired image!
So, at the end of the day with so many reputations lost and so much loss and prestige lost, the Prime Minister sat quiet as the highest court pronounced such a momentous verdict.
Not the matter of damage to the country and to its great many institutions, Parliament, Executive, Media and the judiciary (you don’t act in time and don’t perform your duties under oath to the Constitution and you burden the great institutions of democracy to such shame and exposure in the face of the people and the countries around you, as they all look upon to India as a role model and inspiration.
Then, came the Army Chief’s age determination. Again, as The Hindu had pointed out in its editorial, it is more to the diplomatic instincts of the Supreme Court, rather than to the letter or the spirit of law, the ugly confrontation with the Army was avoided.
Thank God, it is a big relief.
Any man of basic instincts and knowledge must have known that so much is happening in India’s neighbourhood, in Sri Lanka to Maldives and so many countries are waiting in the wings, USA to China to interfere in India’s neighbourhood and dug up their heels! You must have known this and you must have bestirred yourself into some action.
Now, with the latest your Law Minister and the Election Commission facing at such close encounter, with the President’s letter on your table, how long you will take to dither this time also?
As the public men and women have pointed out on the TV screens for the last two days and more, you must have called the Law Minister (actually he met the PM) and administered him a rebuke for conducting himself in such a brazen manner and asked for his letter of resignation. In the event he didn’t do so, he must have been stripped of the portfolio.
The next best5 options are also too many. A letter of apology or regret, as the citizens pointed out. No!
Now comes the greatest snubs.
After all the people, Priyanka Gandhi comes in to plead for justification. She has the cheek to say that it was normal in election times. This over-reach.
Now, other small minions, yes that is the right expression for the nameless and faceless men and women around 10, Janpath! They all seem to justify and evade the reality.
They all seem to be royal household minions!
There is no formal and measured response to the President’s directive or direction, as you might imagine yourself, depending upon your own diminished status in the pecking order as it were!
So, where do you go from here?
You just wait for the UP election results to come in?
Yes, that seems to be the royal household’s response or non-response!
So, once you get the UP results, then you might find some other ways.
That is how also the PM has also been behaving.
No, this time it is very clear.
The PM has no power or power whatever. He is under the thumb of the party president whose gift was his office in the first place.
So, it could be anything tomorrow.
The country’s formal status as a democracy and that too as a parliamentary democracy is thrown to the winds.
It is a sad day for India. For the Indian people.
The Hindu, again (Feb 14, 2012) has pointed out that the Central Government and the Congress party must show their respect for the Election Commission. Other media outlets demand much more. Some newspapers have described the PM in much harsher terms. This is unfortunate.
One hopes the PM acts in time at least in this last case.