Second man outside the Gandhi clan : Leaving it to history to judge
- Sangai Express Editorial :: January 06, 2014 -
Let history judge.
This was the stand of Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh during a press conference on January 3.
Only the second person from outside the Gandhi family to head a Congress led Government at the Centre after the late Narasimha Rao, it remains to be seen how history will judge him in the years to come.
Will he command the respect of his predecessor, Atal Behari Vajpayee, as a former Prime Minister is a matter of speculation at the moment, but the one line statement, let history judge, has an ominous portent.
More than history, Dr Manmohan Singh need to be wary about how his own party treat his legacy, a legacy scripted through ten years in office as the Prime Minister.
Remember the late Narasimha Rao, the man who first initiated the process of liberalising the economy of the country when he took over as the Prime Minister after the 1991 Parliamentary election.
Remember how he was banished into political oblivion and reduced to a non-entity after he demitted office by his own party ?
There is no reason not to believe that the same thing may not happen with Dr Singh.
It is this culture of the Congress, which the good doctor should be wary about and not the Opposition nor the ‘contemporary media’ or the media in the future.
It was not only Narasimha Rao, but also a former president of the All India Congress Committee, Sitaram Kesri.
It was not the BJP nor the media nor any of the political parties which did not see eye to eye with the Congress, but his own partymen, who relegated a former president of the AICC to a footnote.
An indication that anyone from outside the Gandhi family, occupying centre stage, could be reduced to the status of a political pariah.
This has been the culture of the Congress, of course, with the exception of the Gandhi family.
True, Dr Manmohan Singh has apologised for the Sikh massacre in 1984, but the party which he headed as the Prime Minister has not even raised a squeak, much less a voice, on what the then Prime Minister, the late Rajiv Gandhi was doing when thousands of Sikhs were massacred in different parts of Delhi after the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh body guards.
Opposition leader in the Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitely of the BJP had a point in pouncing on the announcement of the Prime Minister that though the corruption charges dated back to the first edition of the UPA Government, but had little impact on the voters as the UPA was voted back to power in the 2009 election for as the articulate Jaitely put it, this amounts to rationalising corruption.
However, what cannot be written off too is the fact that Dr Manmohan Singh managed to give a fresh definition to the understanding being a weak man or a strong man.
A weak Prime Minister, this is one weapon which the BJP has used consistently to land blows on the Prime Minister, but a weak Prime Minister would not have had the gumption of putting his Government on the guillotine by going ahead and signing the Indo-US Nuclear deal, much against the stand of its key ally, the Left.
The Left eventually withdrew outside support, but the Government survived then. This one instance should be a clear indication that being soft spoken does not necessarily mean being weak.
As for his personal integrity and character, there would be few politicians who can stand shoulder to shoulder with Dr Manmohan Singh.
In five months time, the good doctor would be handing over the baton of Prime Minister to a new man, whether from the UPA or the NDA, but in pitching in for Rahul Gandhi as the next Prime Ministerial candidate, Dr Singh did send out the message that his ten years in office as the Prime Minister depended on the Gandhi family, a point which the Opposition will pounce on, in the days to come.
Let history judge, and it may not be surprising if comparisons are made between Dr Singh as the Finance Minister under Narasimha Rao or as the Prime Minister under Sonia Gandhi.
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