2014 a Year of Change in Political Scenario

I took a short break from my hectic schedule last week. When I returned after my brief vacation two developments struck me. First, the minority government of Arvind Kejriwal won the trust vote on the floor of Delhi assembly yesterday with the help of the Congress Party and the second important development was a rare Press conference of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today in New Delhi. The Aam Admi Party Government is going to last at least till the Lok Sabha elections are over and Manmohan Singh is out of race for the office of Prime Minister.

The 90 minute televised Press conference was hardly exciting or revealing. It was the same old clichés and repetition that he made while answering questions from reporters. Only one thing that he said was that he was not in the race for power. “I will pass on the baton to a new Prime Minister even when UPA is voted back to power again”, Singh said.

The people of the country and a majority of his own party men believe and rightly so that the defeat of the Congress in recently held assembly polls and a looming prospect of facing massive defeat in the next general elections to the Lok Sabha is due to massive corruption of the UPA government. Soaring prices of all items including food, milk and vegetables are also held as second factor for the rout of the Congress Party.

But Manmohan Singh does not think it is so. Prime Minister offers ridiculous argument to defend his role. According to him, all major cases like 2G scam, Coal scam and Common Wealth Games scam involving massive corruption of Ministers and MPs took place during the first term of the UPA I that was between 2004 and 2009, granted. Prime Minister says despite all these corruption cases, the people of the country voted the Congress led UPA ack to power in 2009. This, according to Prime Minister, was reposing faith in his leadership by the people of the country. Prime Minister forgets that the massive loot of public money came into light only after the 2009 elections were over. There were news and information coming out in small way and Prime Minister and his cabinet colleagues were shamelessly denying any scam in these deals. It was only after the intervention of the Supreme Court that the CBI pursued the investigation resulting in filing of charge sheet against A Raja, Suresh Kalmadi and others. Manmohan Singh always defended A. Raja and Kalmadi openly and shamelessly.

There was a question by a reporter at the Press conference that Prime Minister seldom opened his mouth on major corruption charges. To this Manmohan Singh replied that it was not correct to say that he did not open his mouth. “I always spoke my mind on key issues at party forum”, Singh said. What does this mean? Is it that Manmohan  Singh spoke in favour of removing A Raja from Union Cabinet, instituting inquiry against Suresh Kalmadi and Shiela Dixit at the core committee meetings of the Congress where Sonia Gandhi along with her key advisors were also present. And the Congress leadership turned down Prime Minister’s views on taking action against the corrupt ministers and MPs. If that was the case least Manmohan Singh could have done was to resign as Prime Minister. But he did not do so; apparently he did not want to quit the office of Prime Minister even at the face of criticism. Not only that when Rahul Gandhi described the Government’s ordnance to protect tainted MPs and MLAs as “nonsense’ adding that the ordinance deserved to be torn and thrown away, Manmohan Singh bore the insult with disgrace and continues in office after withdrawing the ordinance as desired by Rahul Gandhi.

Coming back to Arvind Kejriwal, after winning the trial of strength in the assembly, will the AAP Government initiate move to probe charges of corruption against the former chief minister Shiela Dixit. It is unlikely since Kejriwal would not antagonize the Congress till he thinks it is the time to hit; may be shortly before the general elections.

~R. K. Sinha